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3 Nature Studies g 

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[Library of Con.i 

SEP 22 1900 

Copyright aotry 

OKOR Q!V!SI0N, 

OCT 13 1900 






Copyright, 1900 
By Dana Estes & Company 



Electrotyped and printed 
by Fish Printing Company, Boston 



CONTENTS 



I. Nature Studies . 

II. Nature and Art 

III. Sky and Cloud . 

IV. About the Earth 
V. Jewels of the Earth 

VI. The Mountain Kingdom 

VII. About Water 

VIII. Color Studies . 

IX. Trees and Their Ministry 

X. Plants and Flowers . 

XI. Grass, Moss and Lichen 

XII. A Charm of Birds 



9 

47 

33 

127 

J 59 

181 ^ 
221 «"" 

249 

273 
299 

343 
359 



INTRODUCTION, 



The general impression about volumes 
of selections is, perhaps, correct, namely; — 
that their object is, that by one individual's 
careful research many individuals may be 
enabled to obtain a superficial knowledge 
of an author's writings. 

This volume of " Nature Studies " has 
been compiled with no such intention. On 
the contrary, its object is simply to serve 
as a guide to the rich harvests about " the 
universe of visible things which have no 
faculty of speech," but which are ripe for 
gleaning in John Ruskin's complete works. 
Hence the compiler's choice of extracts has 
been made to suggest the wealth of truth 
and beauty to be found, and to awaken a 
thirst for fuller knowledge of these treas- 
ures rather than to satisfy that thirst. This 



6 INTR OD UCTION. 

explains why, in many cases, the quotations 
may seem fragmentary and abrupt. But in 
every instance they can be verified and 
amplified by reference to the Illustrated 
Cabinet Edition of John Ruskin's Works 
published by Dana Estes and Company. 



The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God : 
to him who does not search it out, darkness, as it is to 
him who does infinity. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Chap. II, p. 129. 



The whole heart of Nature seems thirsting to give, 

and still to give. 

— In Montibus Sanctis, Chap. II, p. 1 31. 



NATURE STUDIES. 



i. 

NATURE STUDIES. 

The living inhabitation of the world — 
the grazing and nesting in it, — the spiritual 
power of the air, the rocks, the waters, — to 
be in the midst of it, and rejoice and won- 
der at it, and help it if I could, — happier 
if it needed no help of mine, — this was 
the essential love of Nature in me, this the 
root of all that I have usefully become, 
and the light of all that I have rightly 

learned. — Praterita, Vol. I, Chap. IX, p. 142. 

As the art of life is learned, it will be 
found at last that all lovely things are also 
necessary : — the wild flower by the wayside, 
as well as the tended corn; and the wild 
birds and creatures of the forest, as well 
as the tended cattle : because man doth not 
live by bread only, but also by the desert 
manna: by every wondrous word and 
unknowable work of God. 

— Unto This Last, Essay IV, p. 224. 

9 



io NATURE STUDIES. 

If we take full view of the matter, we shall 
find that the love of Nature, wherever it has 
existed, has been a faithful and sacred ele- 
ment of human feeling ; that is to say, sup- 
posing all circumstances otherwise the same 
with respect to two individuals, the one who 
loves nature most will be always found to 
have more faith in God than the other. It 
is intensely difficult, owing to the confusing 
and counter influences which always mingle 
in the data of the problem, to make this 
abstraction fairly ; but so far as we can do 
it, so far, I boldly assert, the result is con- 
stantly the same; the nature-worship will be 
found to bring with it such a sense of the 
presence and power of a Great Spirit as no 
mere reasoning can either induce or con- 
trovert; and where that nature-worship is 
innocently pursued, — i. e., with due respect 
to other claims on time, feeling, and exertion, 
and associated with the higher principles of 
religion, — it becomes the channel of certain 
sacred truths, which by no other means can 
be conveyed. 

. . . Instead of supposing the love of 
Nature necessarily connected with the faith- 
lessness of the age, I believe it is connected 
properly with the benevolence and liberty 
of the age; that it is precisely the most 



NATURE STUDIES. n 

healthy element which distinctively belongs 
to us; and that out of it, cultivated no longer 
in levity or ignorance, but in earnestness and 
as a duty, results will spring of an importance 
at present inconceivable; and lights arise, 
which, for the first time in man's history, will 
reveal to him the true nature of his life, the 
true field for his energies, and the true rela- 
tions between him and his Maker. 

—Modem Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVII, p. 375, 376. 

Ideas of beauty are among the noblest 
which can be presented to the human mind, 
invariably exalting and purifying it according 
to their degree ; and it would appear that we 
are intended by the Deity to be constantly 
under their influence, because there is not 
one single object in Nature which is not 
capable of conveying them, and which, to 
the rightly perceiving mind, does not pre- 
sent an incalculably greater number of 
beautiful than of deformed parts; there 
being in fact scarcely anything, in pure, 
undiseased nature, like positive deformity, 
but only degrees of beauty, or such slight 
and rare points of permitted contrast as may 
render all around them more valuable by 
their opposition, spots of blackness in crea- 
tion, to make its colors felt. 

— Modem Painters^ Vol. I, Part I, Sect. I, Chap. VI, p. 102. 



12 NATURE STUDIES. 

Whenever people don't look at Nature, 
they always think they can improve her. 

— The Two Paths, Lecture I, p. 22. 

The real majesty of the appearance of 
the thing to us, depends upon the degree 
in which we ourselves possess the power of 
understanding it, — that penetrating, posses- 
sion-taking power of the imagination — the 
very life of the man, considered as a seeing 
creature. . . . 

Examine the nature of your own emotion, 
(if you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you 
will find all the brightness of that emotion 
hanging, like dew on gossamer, on a curious 
web of subtle fancy and imperfect knowl- 
edge. 

First, you have a vague idea of its size, 
coupled with wonder at the work of the 
great Builder of its walls and foundations, 
then an apprehension of its eternity, a 
pathetic sense of its perpetualness, and your 
own transientness, as of the grass upon its 
sides; then, and in this very sadness, a sense 
of strange companionship with past gener- 
ations in seeing what they saw. They did 
not see the clouds that are floating over your 
head ; nor the cottage wall on the other side 
of the field ; nor the road by which you are 



NATURE STUDIES. 13 

travelling. But they saw that. The wall of 
granite in the heavens was the same to them 
as to you. They have ceased to look upon 
it; you will soon cease to look also, and 
the granite wall will be for others. Then, 
mingled with these more solemn imagina- 
tions, come the understandings of the gift 
and glories of the Alps, the fancying forth of 
all the fountains that well from its rocky 
walls, and strong rivers that are born out of 
its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that 
wind between its cliffs, and all the chalets 
that gleam among its clouds, and happy 
farmsteads couched upon its pastures ; 
while together with the thoughts of these, rise 
strange sympathies with all the unknown of 
human life, and happiness, and death, signi- 
fied by that narrow white flame of the ever- 
lasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky. 
These images, and far more than these, 
lie at the root of the emotion which you feel 
at the sight of the Alp. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. X, p. 176. 

By the Word, or Voice, or Breath, or 
Spirit, the heavens and earth, and all the 
host of them, were made; and in it they 
exist. It is your life ; and speaks to you 
always, so long as you live nobly. ... It 



i 4 NATURE STUDIES. 

may come to you in clouds — it may come 
to you in the stillness of deserts. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. II, Letter XXXVI, p. 121. 

Under natural conditions the degree of 
mental excitement necessary to bodily health 
is provided by the course of the seasons, and 
the various skill and fortune of agriculture. 
In the country every morning of the year 
brings with it a new aspect of springing or 
fading nature ; a new duty to be fulfilled upon 
earth, and a new promise or warning in 
heaven. No day is without its innocent 
hope, its special prudence, its kindly gift and 
its sublime danger ; arid in every process of 
wise husbandry, and every effort of contend- 
ing or remedial courage, the wholesome pas- 
sions, pride, and bodily power of the laborer 
are excited and exerted in happiest unison : 

While the divine laws of seed-time which 
cannot be recalled, harvests which cannot 
be hastened, and winter in which no man 
can work, compel the impatiences and cov- 
eting of his heart into labor too submissive 
to be anxious, and rest too sweet to be 

Wanton. — The Ethics of the Dust, Lecture X, pp. 157, 158. 

The woods, which I had only looked on 
as wilderness, fulfilled I then saw, in their 



NATURE STUDIES. 15 

beauty, the same laws which guided the 
clouds, divided the light, and balanced the 
wave. " He hath made everything beautiful, 
in his time," became for me thenceforward 
the interpretation of the bond between the 
human mind and all visible things. 

— Prcetorita, Vol. II, Chap. IV, p. 253. 

Whatever beauty there may result from 
effects of light on foreground objects, from 
the dew of the grass, the flash of the cas- 
cade, the glitter of the birch trunk, or the 
fair daylight hues of darker things (and 
joyfulness there is in all of them) there is 
yet a light which the eye invariably seeks 
with a deeper feeling of the beautiful, the 
light of the declining or breaking day, and 
the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like 
watch-fires in the green sky of the horizon ; 
a deeper feeling, I say, not perhaps more 
acute, but having more of spiritual hope 
and longing. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part III, Sect. I, Chap. V, p. 265. 

Among the hours of his life to which the 
writer looks back with peculiar gratitude, as 
having been marked by more than ordinary 
fulness of joy or clearness of teaching, is one 
passed, now some years ago, near time of 



1 6 NATURE STUDIES. 

sunset, among the broken masses of pine 
forest which skirt the course of the Ain, 
above the village of Champagnole, in the 
Jura. It is a spot which has all the solem- 
nity, with none of the savageness, of the 
Alps; where there is a sense of a great 
power beginning to be manifested in the 
earth, and of a deep and majestic concord 
in the rise of the long low lines of piny 
hills ; the first utterance of those mighty 
mountain symphonies, soon to be more 
loudly lifted and wildly broken along the 
battlements of the Alps. But their strength 
is as yet restrained; and the far-reaching 
ridges of pastoral mountain succeed each 
other, like the long and sighing swell which 
moves over quiet waters from some far-off 
stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness 
pervading that vast monotony. The de- 
structive forces and the stern expression of 
the central ranges are alike withdrawn. No 
frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of 
ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures : 
no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair 
ranks of her forests ; no pale, defiled, or furi- 
ous rivers send their rude and changeful 
ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by 
eddy, the clear streams wind along their 
well-known beds ; and under the dark quiet- 



NATURE STUDIES. 17 

ness of the undisturbed pines, there springs 
up, year by year, such company of joyful 
flowers as I know not the like of among all 
the blessings of the earth. It was Spring- 
time, too; and all were coming forth in 
clusters crowded for very love; there was 
room enough for all, but they crushed their 
leaves into all manner of strange shapes 
only to be nearer each other. There was 
the wood anemone, star after star, closing 
every now and then into nebulae ; and there 
was the oxalis, troop by troop like virginal 
processions of the Mois de Marie, the dark 
vertical clefts in the limestone choked up 
with them as with heavy snow, and touched 
with ivy on the edges — ivy as light and 
lovely as the vine ; and ever and anon, a 
blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in 
sunny places ; and in the more open ground, 
the vetch, and comfrey, and mezereon, and 
the small sapphire buds of the Polygala 
Alpina, and the wild strawberry, just a 
blossom or two, all showered amidst the 
golden softness of deep, warm, amber- 
colored moss. I came out presently on 
the edge of the ravine; the solemn mur- 
mur of its waters rose suddenly from 
beneath, mixed with the singing of the 
thrushes among the pine boughs ; and on 



1 8 NATURE STUDIES. 

the opposite side of the valley, walled all 
along as it was by grey cliffs of limestone, 
there was a hawk sailing slowly off their 
brow, touching them nearly with his wings, 
and with the shadow of the pines flicker- 
ing upon his plumage from above; but 
with a fall of a hundred fathoms under his 
breast, and the curling pools of the green 
river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath 
him, their foam globes moving with him 
as he flew. 

— Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. VI, p. 168. 

The truths of Nature are one eternal 
change — one infinite variety. There is no 
bush on the face of the globe exactly like 
another bush ; there are no two trees in the 
forest whose boughs bend into the same 
network; nor two leaves on the same tree 
which could not be told one from the other, 
nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. I, Chap. II, p. 134. 

For every distance from the eye there is a 
peculiar kind of beauty, or a different system 
of lines of form : the sight of that beauty is 
reserved for that distance, and for that alone. 
If you approach nearer, that kind of beauty 
is lost, and another succeeds, to be dis- 



NATURE STUDIES. 19 

organised and reduced to strange incom- 
prehensible means and appliances in its turn. 
If you desire to perceive the great harmonies 
of the form of a rocky mountain, you must 
not ascend upon its sides. All there is 
disorder and accident, or seems so : sudden 
starts of its shattered beds hither and thither; 
ugly struggles of unexpected strength from 
under the ground ; fallen fragments, toppling 
one over another into more helpless fall. 
Retire from it, and, as your eye commands 
it more and more, as you see the ruined 
mountain world with a wider glance, behold ! 
dim sympathies begin to busy themselves in 
the disjointed mass; line binds itself into 
stealthy fellowship with line; group by 
group, the helpless fragments gather them- 
selves into ordered companies ; new captains 
of hosts and masses of battalions become 
visible, one by one, and far away answers of 
foot to foot, and of bone to bone, until the 
powerless chaos is seen risen up with girded 
loins, and not one piece of all the unregard 
heap could now be spared from the mystic 

whole. — The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXI, p. 245. 

The work of the great spirit of Nature is 
as deep and unapproachable in the lowest as 
in the noblest objects — the Divine Mind is 



20 NATURE STUDIES. 

as visible in its full energy of operation on 
every lowly bank and mouldering stone, as 
in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and 
settling the foundation of the earth. And 
to the rightly perceiving mind, there is the 
same infinity, the same majesty, the same 
power, the same unity, and the same per- 
fection, manifest in the casting of the clay 
as in the scattering of the cloud, in the 
mouldering of the dust as in the kindling of 
the day-star. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. IV, p. 91. 

The Val di Nievole is some five miles wide 
by thirty long, and is simply one field of corn 
or rich grassland. . . . There are poppies 
and bright ones, too, about the banks and 
roadsides; but the corn of Val di Nievole 
is too proud to grow with poppies, and is 
set with wild gladiolus instead, deep violet. 
Here and there a mound of crag rises out 
of the fields, crested with stone-pine, and 
studded all over with large stars of the white 
rock-cistus. Quiet streams, filled with the 
close crowds of the golden water-flag, wind 
beside meadows painted with purple orchis. 
On each side of the great plain is a wilder- 
ness of hills veiled at their feet with a gray 
cloud of olive woods. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter XVIII, p. 239. 



NATURE STUDIES. 21 

The peculiar levity with which natural 
scenery is regarded by a large number of 
modern minds cannot be considered as 
entirely characteristic of the age, inasmuch 
as it never can belong to the greatest 
intellects. 

Men of any high mental power must be 
serious, whether in ancient or modern days ; 
a certain degree of reverence for fair scenery 
is found in all our great writers without 
exception. . . . 

It is only the dull, the uneducated, or the 
worldly, whom it is painful to meet on the 
hill sides. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVI, p. 326. 

It is not sufficient that the facts or the 
features of Nature be around us, while they 
are not within us. We may walk day by 
day through grove and meadow, and scarcely 
know more concerning them than is known 
by bird and beast, that the one has shade for 
the head, and the other softness for the foot. 
It is not true that " the eye, it cannot choose 
but see," unless we obey the following con- 
dition, and go forth " in a wise passiveness," 
free from that plague of our own hearts 
which brings the shadow of ourselves, and 
the tumult of our petty interests and impa- 



22 NATURE STUDIES. 

tient passions, across the light and calm of 
Nature. We do not sit at the feet of our 
mistress to listen to her teachings ; but we 
seek her only to drag from her that which 
may suit our purpose, to see in her the con- 
firmation of a theory, or find in her fuel for 
our pride. . . . 

You may rest assured that those who do 
not care for Nature, cannot see her. A few 
of her phenomena lie on the surface: the 
nobler number lie deep, and are the reward 
of watching and of thought. 

— Arrows of the Chacc, Letter I, pp. 31, 32. 

Nature keeps whatever she has done 
best, close sealed, until it is regarded with 
reverence. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. V, p. 100. 

Although in all lovely nature, there is, 
first, an excellent degree of simple beauty, 
addressed to the eye alone, yet often what 
impresses us most will form but a very small 
portion of that visible beauty. That beauty 
may, for instance, be composed of lovely 
flowers and glittering streams, and blue sky, 
and white clouds ; and yet the thing which 
impresses us most, and which we should 
be sorriest to lose, may be a thin gray film 



NATURE STUDIES. 23 

on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the 
space of the scene it occupies, as a piece of 
gossamer on a near at hand bush, nor in any 
wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer ; 
but, because the gossamer is known by us 
for a little bit of spider's work, and the other 
gray film is known to mean a mountain ten 
thousand feet high, inhabited by a race of 
noble mountaineers, we are solemnly im- 
pressed by the aspect of it; and yet, all the 
while the thoughts and knowledge which 
cause us to receive this impression are so 
obscure that we are not conscious of them. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVII, p. 353. 

If it is not human design you are looking 
for, there is more beauty in the next wayside 
bank than in all the sun-blackened paper 
you could collect in a lifetime. Go and look 
at the real landscape, and take care of it; do 
not think you can get the good of it in a 
black stain portable in a folio. But if you 
care for human thought and passion, then 
learn yourselves to watch the course and fall 
of the light by whose influence you live, and 
to share in the joy of human spirits in the 
heavenly gifts of sunbeam and shade. For 
I tell you truly, that to a quiet heart, and 
healthy brain, and industrious hand there is 



24 NATURE STUDIES. 

more delight, and use, in the dappling of 
one wood-glade, with flowers and sunshine, 
than to the restless, heartless, and idle could 
be brought by a panorama of a belt of the 
world, photographed round the equator. 

— Lectures on Art, Lecture VI, p. 310. 

I am Utopian and enthusiastic enough 
to believe that the time will come when 
the world will discover and understand 
that God paints the clouds and shapes the 
moss-fibres, that men may be happy in see- 
ing Him at His work, and that in resting 
quietly beside Him, and watching His work- 
ing, and, — according to the power He has 
communicated to ourselves, and the guidance 
He grants, — in carrying out His purposes 
of peace and charity among all His creatures, 
are the only real happinesses that ever were, 
or will be, possible to mankind. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVII, p. 381. 

The study of Natural History is one emi- 
nently addressed to the active energies of 
body and mind. Nothing is to be got out 
of it by dreaming, not always much by think- 
ing. It is work for the hills and fields, — 
work of foot and hand, knife and hammer. 

— Arrows of the Chace, Letter VI, p. 133. 



NATURE STUDIES. 



25 



Last autumn I saw something bright; 
low sunshine at six o'clock of an October 
morning, glancing down a long bank of 
fern covered with hoar-frost ... I noted it 
as more beautiful than anything I had ever 
seen, to my remembrance, in gladness and 
infinitude of light. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter XV, p. 204. 

Though Nature is constantly beautiful, 
she does not exhibit her highest powers 
of beauty constantly, for then they would 
satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is 
necessary to their appreciation that they 
should be rarely shown. Her finest touches 
are things that must be watched for; her 
most perfect passages of beauty are the 
most evanescent. She is constantly doing 
something beautiful for us, but it is some- 
thing which she has not done before and 
will not do again: some exhibition of her 
general powers in particular circumstances 
which, if we do not catch at the instant it 
is passing, will not be repeated for us. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. I, Chap. IV, p. 146. 

You may enjoy a thing legitimately because 
it is rare, and cannot be seen often (as you 
do a fine aurora, or a sunset, or an unusually 



26 NATURE STUDIES. 

lovely flower) : that is Nature's way of stim- 
ulating your attention. 

— Aratra Pentelici> Lecture I, p. 298. 

Landscape seems hardly to have exercised 
any strong influence, as such, on any pagan 
nation, or pagan artist. I have no time to 
enter into any details on this, of course, most 
intricate and difficult subject ; but I will only 
ask you to observe, that wherever natural 
scenery is alluded to by the ancients, it is 
either agriculturally, with the kind of feeling 
that a good Scotch farmer has; sensually, 
in the enjoyment of sun or shade, cool 
winds or sweet scents; fearfully, in a mere 
vulgar dread of rocks dna desolate places, 
as compared with the comfort of cities; or 
finally, superstitiously, in the personification 
or deification of natural powers generally 
with much degradation of their impressive- 
ness, as in the paltry fables of Ulysses 
receiving the wind bags from y^Eolus, and 
of the Cyclops hammering lightening sharp 
at the ends on an anvil. 

Of course you will here and there find 
feeble evidences of a higher sensibility, 
chiefly, I think, in Plato, yEschylus, Aris- 
tophanes, and Virgil. Homer, though in 
the epithets he applies to landscape always 



NATURE STUDIES. 27 

thoroughly graphic, uses the same epithet 
for rocks, seas, and trees, from one end of 
his poem to the other, evidently without the 
smallest interest in anything of the kind; 
and in the mass of heathen writers the 
absence of sensation on these subjects is 
singularly painful. For instance, in that, to 
my mind, most disgusting of all so-called 
poems, the journey to Brundusium, you 
remember that Horace takes exactly as 
much interest in the scenery he is passing 
through, as Sancho Panza would have done. 
You will find on the other hand, that the 
language of the Bible is specifically dis- 
tinguished from all other early literature, by 
its delight in natural imagery; and that the 
dealings of God with His people are calcu- 
lated peculiarly to awaken this sensibility 
within them ; and that scenery is associated 
in their minds with the immediate manifes- 
tation and presence of the Divine Power . . . 
and their literature is full of expressions, 
not only testifying a vivid sense of the 
power of Nature over man, but showing that 
sympathy with natural things themselves, as 
if they had human souls, which is the espe- 
cial characteristic of true love of the works 
of God. 

— Lectures on Architecture and Painting, Lecture III, p. 289. 



28 NATURE STUDIES. 

I was up by the mill-stream this evening, 
and climbed to the right of it, up among 
the sloping waves of grass. I never was so 
struck by their intense beauty, — the masses 
of walnut shading them with their broad, 
cool, clearly-formed foliage ; the glossy gray 
stems of the cherry trees, as if bound round 
tight with satin, twining and writhing against 
the shadows : the tall pollards of oak set 
here and there in the soft banks, as if to 
show their smoothness by contrast, yet them- 
selves beautiful, rugged, and covered with 
deep brown and bright silver moss. Here 
and there a chestnut — sharp, and soft, and 
starry; and always the steep banks, one 
above another, melting into terraces of pure 
velvet, gilded with corn : here and there a 
black — jet black — crag of slate breaking 
into a frown above them, and mouldering 
away down into the gloomy torrent, fringed 
on its opposite edge, a grisly cliff, with 
delicate birch and pine, rising against the 
snow light of Mount Blanc. 

— Prceterita, Vol. II, Chap. XI, p. 364. 

The charts of the world which have been 
drawn up by modern science have thrown 
into a narrow space the expression of a 
vast amount of knowledge, but I have 



NATURE SI U DIES. 29 

never yet seen any one pictorial enough 
to enable the spectator to imagine the kind 
of contrast in physical character which 
exists between Northern and Southern 
countries. We know the difference in 
detail, but we have not that broad glance 
and grasp which would enable us to feel 
them in their fulness. We know that gen- 
tians grow on the Alps, and olives on the 
Apennines; but we do not enough con- 
ceive for ourselves that variegated mosaic 
of the world's surface which a bird sees in 
its migration, that difference between the 
district of the gentian and of the olive 
which the stork and the swallow see far off, 
as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let 
us, for a moment, try to raise ourselves 
even above the level of their flight, and 
imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath 
us like an irregular lake, and all its ancient 
promontories sleeping in the sun ; here and 
there an angry spot of thunder, a gray 
stain of storm, moving upon the burning 
field ; and here and there a fixed wreath 
of white volcano smoke, surrounded by its 
circle of ashes ; but for the most part a 
great peacefulness of light, Syria and 
Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces 
of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, 



3 o NATURE STUDIES. 

chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with 
bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and 
glowing softly with terraced gardens, and 
flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed 
among masses of laurel, and orange and 
plumy palm, that abate with their gray- 
green shadows the burning of the marble 
rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry, slop- 
ing under lucent sand. Then let us pass 
farther towards the north, until we see 
the orient colors change gradually into a 
vast belt of rainy green, where the pas- 
tures of Switzerland and poplar valleys of 
France, and dark forests of the Danube 
and Carpathians stretch from the mouths 
of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen 
through clefts in gray swirls of rain-cloud 
and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, 
spreading low along the pasture lands ; and 
then, farther north still, to see the earth 
heave into mighty masses of leaden rock 
and heathy moor, bordering with a broad 
waste of gloomy purple that belt of field 
and wood, and splintering into irregular 
and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, 
beaten by storm and chilled by ice-drift, 
and tormented by furious pulses of con- 
tending tide, until the roots of the last 
forests fail from among the hill ravines, and 



NATURE STUDIES. 31 

the hunger of the north wind bites their 
peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the 
wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, death- 
like, its white teeth against us out of the 
polar twilight. 

— The Stones of Venice ', Vol. II, Chap. VI, pp. 156, 157. 

It had been wild weather when I left 
Rome, and all across the Campagna the 
clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, 
with a clap of thunder or two, and break- 
ing gleams of sun along the Claudian 
aqueduct lighting up the infinity of its 
arches like the bridge of chaos. But as I 
climbed the long slope of the Alban 
mount, the storm swept finally to the 
north, and the noble outlines of the domes 
of Albano and graceful darkness of its ilex 
grove rose against pure streaks of alter- 
nate blue and amber, the upper sky gradu- 
ally flushing through the last fragments of 
rain-cloud in deep, palpitating azure, half 
ether and half dew. The noon-day sun 
came slanting down the rocky slopes of 
La Riccia, and its masses of entangled and 
tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were 
mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand 
evergreens, were penetrated with it as with 
rain. I cannot call it color, it was conflagra- 



32 NATURE STUDIES. 

tion. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like 
the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoic- 
ing trees sank into the valley in showers 
of light, every separate leaf quivering with 
buoyant and burning life ; each, as it turned 
to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first 
a torch and then an emerald. Far up into 
the recesses of the valley, the green vistas 
arched like the hollows of mighty waves 
of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus 
flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, 
and silver flakes of orange spray tossed 
into the air around them, breaking over 
the gray walls of rock into a thousand 
separate stars, fading and kindling alter- 
nately as the weak wind lifted and let them 
fall. Every blade of grass burned like the 
golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden 
gleams as the foliage broke and closed 
above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a 
cloud at sunset: the motionless masses of 
dark rock — dark though flushed with scar- 
let lichen, — casting their quiet shadows 
across its restless radiance, the fountain 
underneath them filling its marble hollow 
with blue mist and fitful sound, and over all 
— the multitudinous bars of amber and rose, 
the sacred clouds that have no darkness, 
and only exist to illumine, were seen in 



NATURE STUDIES. 33 

fathomless intervals between the solemn 
and orbed repose of the stone pines, pass- 
ing to lose themselves in the last, white, 
blinding lustre of the measureless line 
where the Campagna melted into the blaze 
of the sea. 

—Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. II, Chap. II, pp. 256, 257. 

There is not a cluster of weeds growing 
in any cranny of ruin which has not a 
beauty in all respects nearly equal, and, in 
some, immeasurably superior, to that, of the 
most elaborate sculpture of its stones. 

— Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. Ill, p. 56. 

With us, observe, the idea of the Divin- 
ity is apt to get separated from the life 
of nature; and imagining our God upon a 
cloudy throne, far above the earth, and not 
in the flowers or waters, we approach those 
visible things with a theory that they are 
dead, governed by physical laws, and so forth. 
But coming to them, we find the theory fail ; 
that they are not dead; that, say what we 
choose about them, the instinctive sense of 
their being alive is too strong for us ; and in 
scorn of all physical law, the wilful fountain 
sings, and the kindly flowers rejoice. And 
then, puzzled and yet happy; pleased, and 



34 NATURE STUDIES. 

yet ashamed of being so ; accepting sympathy 
from nature, which we do not believe it gives, 
and giving sympathy to nature, which we do 
not believe it receives, — mixing, besides, all 
manner of purposeful play and conceit with 
their involuntary fellowships, — we fall neces- 
sarily into the curious web of hesitating 
sentiment, pathetic fallacy, and wandering 
fancy, which form a great part of our modern 
view of nature. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XIII, p. 229. 

The simplest forms of Nature are strangely 
animated by the sense of the Divine pres- 
ence; the trees and flowers seem all, in a 
sort children of God. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVII, p. 383. 

Look at the crest of the Alp, from the far- 
away plains over which its light is cast, 
whence human souls have communion with 
it by their myriads. The child looks up to it 
in the dawn, and the husbandman in the bur- 
den and heat of the day, and the old man in 
the going down of the sun, and it is to them 
all as the celestial city on the world's horizon ; 
dyed with the depth of heaven and clothed 
with the calm of eternity. There was it set, 
for holy dominion, by Him who marked for 



NATURE STUDIES. 35 

the sun his journey, and bade the moon know 
her going down. It was built for its place in 
the far-off sky ; approach it, and as the sound 
of the voice of man dies away about its 
foundations, and the tide of human life, shal- 
lowed upon the vast aerial shore, is at last 
met by the Eternal " Here shall thy waves be 
stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into 
blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are 
rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork sad- 
dened into wasting snow, the storm-brands 
of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own 
ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment. 

— The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XXI, p. 244. 

I do not know that there is a district in 
the world more calculated to illustrate this 
power of the expectant imagination, than 
that which surrounds the city of Fribourg 
in Switzerland, extending from it towards 
Berne. 

It is an undulating district of gray sand- 
stone, never attaining any considerable 
height, but having enough of the mountain 
spirit to throw itself into continual succes- 
sion of bold slope and dale ; elevated, also, 
just far enough above the sea to render the 
pine a frequent forest tree along its irregu- 
lar ridges. Through this elevated tract the 



36 NATURE STUDIES. 

river cuts its way in a ravine some five or 
six hundred feet in depth, which winds for 
leagues between the gentle hills, unthought 
of, until its edge is approached: and then, 
suddenly through the boughs of the firs, 
the eye perceives, beneath, the green and 
gliding stream, and the broad walls of 
sandstone cliff that form its banks: hol- 
lowed out where the river leans against 
them, as it turns, into perilous overhang- 
ing, and, on the other shore, at the same 
spots, leaving little breadths of meadow 
between them and the water, half-overgrown 
with thicket, deserted in their sweetness, 
inaccessible from above, and rarely visited 
by any curious wanderers along the hardly 
traceable footpath which struggles for exist- 
ence beneath the rocks. And there the 
river ripples and eddies and murmurs in 
utter solitude. It is passing through the 
midst of a thickly peopled country ; but 
never was a stream so lonely. The fee- 
blest and most far-away torrent among the 
high hills has its companions; the goats 
browse beside it; and the traveller drinks 
from it, and passes over it with his staff; 
and the peasant traces a new channel for 
it down to his mill-wheel. But this stream 
has no companions ; it flows on in infinite 



NATURE STUDIES. 37 

seclusion, not secret nor threatening, but 
a quietness of sweet daylight and open 
air, — a broad space of tender and deep 
desolateness, drooped into repose out of 
the midst of human labor and life; the 
waves plashing lowly, with none to hear 
them; and the wild birds building in the 
boughs, with none to fray them away; and 
the soft, fragrant herbs rising and breathing, 
and fading, with no hand to gather them; 
— and yet all bright and bare to the clouds 
above, and to the fresh fall of the passing 
sunshine and pure rain. 

But above the brows of those scarped 
cliffs, all is in an instant changed. A few 
steps only beyond the firs that stretch their 
branches, angular, and wild, and white, like 
forks of lightning, into the air of the ravine, 
and we are in an arable country of the most 
perfect richness; the swathes of its corn 
glowing and burning from field to field : its 
pretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards 
and flowery gardens, and goodly with steep- 
roofed storehouse and barn; its well-kept, 
hard, park-like roads rising and falling from 
hillside to hillside, or disappearing among 
brown banks of moss, and thicket of the 
wild raspberry and rose ; or gleaming through 
lines of tall trees, half glade, half avenue, 



38 NATURE STUDIES. 

where the gate opens, or the gateless path 
turns trustfully aside, unhindered, into the 
garden of some statelier house, surrounded in 
rural pride with its golden hives, and carved 
granaries, and irregular domain of latticed 
and espaliered cottages, gladdening to look 
upon in their delicate homeliness — delicate, 
yet, in some sort, rude. . . . For there is an 
untamed strength even in all that soft and 
habitable land. It is, indeed, gilded with 
corn and fragrant with deep grass, but it is 
not subdued to the plough or the scythe. It 
gives at its own free will, — it seems to have 
nothing wrested from it nor conquered from 
it. It is not redeemed from desertness, but 
unrestrained in fruitfulness, — a generous 
land, bright with capricious plenty, and 
laughing from vale to vale in fitful fulness, 
kind and wild; nor this without some sterner 
elements mingled in the heart of it. For 
along all its ridges stand the dark masses 
of innumerable pines, taking no part in its 
gladness, asserting themselves forever as 
fixed shadows, not to be pierced or banished 
even in the intensest sunlight : fallen flakes 
and fragments of the night, stayed in their 
solemn squares in the midst of all the rosy 
bendings of the orchard boughs, and yellow 
effulgence of the harvest, and tracing them- 



NATURE STUDIES. 



39 



selves in black network and motionless 
fringes against the blanched blue of the 
horizon in its saintly clearness. And yet 
they do not sadden the landscape, but seem 
to have been set there chiefly to show how 
bright everything else is round them; and all 
the clouds look of purer silver, and all the 
air seems filled with a whiter and more living 
sunshine, when they are pierced by the sable 
points of the pines ; and all the pastures look 
of more glowing green where they run up 
between the purple trunks ; and the sweet 
field foot-paths skirt the edges of the forest 
for the sake of its shade, sloping up and 
down about the slippery roots, and losing 
themselves every now and then hopelessly 
among the violets, and ground ivy, and 
brown sheddings of the fibrous leaves; and at 
last plunging into some open aisle where the 
light through the distant stems shows that 
there is a chance of coming out again on the 
other side, and coming out, indeed, in a little 
while, from the scented darkness, into the 
dazzling air and marvellous landscape, and 
stretches still farther and farther in new wilful- 
ness of grove and garden, until, at last, the 
craggy mountains of Simmenthal rise out of it, 
sharp into the rolling of the southern clouds. 

— Modem Painters, Vol. IV, Part X, Chap. XI, pp. 173-177. 



40 NATURE STUDIES. 

There is a decisive instant in all matters; 
and if you look languidly you are sure to 
miss it. Nature seems always, somehow, try- 
ing to make you miss it. " I will see that 
through," you must say, "without turning 
my head " ; or you won't see the trick of it 

at all. — Mornings in Florence — Second Morning, p. 28. 

That sentence of Genesis, " I have given 
thee every green herb for meat," like all the 
rest of the book, has a profound symbol- 
ical as well as a literal meaning. It is not 
merely the nourishment of the body, but 
the food of the soul, that is intended. The 
green herb is, of all nature, that which is 
most essential to the healthy spiritual life 
of man. Most of us do not need fine scen- 
ery: the precipice and the mountain peak 
are not intended to be seen by all men, — 
perhaps, their power is greatest over those 
who are unaccustomed to them. But trees, 
and fields, and flowers were made for all, and 
are necessary for all. God has connected the 
labor which is essential to the bodily suste- 
nance, with the pleasures which are healthi- 
est for the heart: and while He made the 
ground stubborn, He made its herbage fra- 
grant, and its blossoms fair. The proudest 
architecture that man can build has no 



NATURE STUDIES. 41 

higher honor than to bear the image and 
recall the memory of that grass of the field 
which is, at once, the type and the support 
of his existence : the goodly building is then 
most glorious when it is sculptured into the 
likeness of the leaves of Paradise; and the 
great Gothic Spirit noble in its disquietude, 
is also noble in its hold of nature ; it is 
indeed, like the dove of Noah, in that she 
found no rest upon the face of the waters — 
but like her in this also, " Lo, in her mouth 
was an olive branch, plucked off." 

— The Stones of Venice^ Vol. II, Chap. VI, p. 202. 

We know more certainly every day that 
whatever appears to us harmful in the uni- 
verse has some beneficent or necessary 
operation : that the storm which destroys a 
harvest brightens the sunbeams for harvests 
yet unsown, and that the volcano which 
buries a city preserves a thousand from de- 
struction. But the evil is not for the time 
less fearful, because we have learned it to 
be necessary ; and we easily understand the 
timidity or the tenderness of the spirit which 
would withdraw itself from the presence of 
destruction. . . . That man is greater, how- 
ever, who contemplates with an equal mind 
the alternations of terror and of beauty ; who, 



42 NATURE STUDIES. 

not rejoicing less beneath the sunny sky, 
can bear also to watch the bars of twilight 
narrowing on the horizon, and, not less 
sensible to the blessing of the peace of 
Nature, can rejoice in the magnificence of 
the ordinance by which that peace is pro- 
tected and secured. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. VI, p. 190. 

"Not enjoying the beauty of things," goes 
ever so much deeper than mere blindness. 

— Hortus Inclusus, p. 63. 

There are few so utterly lost, but that 
they receive, and know that they receive, at 
certain moments, strength of some kind, 
or rebuke from the appealings of outward 
things; and that it is not possible for a 
Christian man to walk across so much as 
a rood of the natural earth, with mind un- 
agitated and rightly poised, without receiving 
strength and hope from some stone, flower, 
leaf, or sound, nor without a sense of a dew 
falling upon him out of the sky. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part III, Sect. I, Chap. XV, p. 383. 

All Nature, with one voice — with one 
glory, is set to teach you reverence for the 
life communicated to you from the Father 



NATURE STUDIES. 



43 



of Spirits. The song of birds, and their 
plumage; the scent of flowers, their color, 
their very existence, are in direct connection 
with the mystery of that communicated life. 

— The Eagle's Nest, Lecture VIII, p. 398. 



NATURE AND ART. 



Have no fear in judging between Nature and Art, 
so only that you love both. If you can love one only, 
then let it be Nature : you are safe with her : but do 
not then attempt to judge the Art, to which you do not 
care to give thought, or time. But if you love both, 
you may judge between them fearlessly ; you may esti- 
mate the last, by its making you remember the first, 
and giving you the same kind of joy. 

— The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XXX, p. 345. 



II. 

NATURE AND ART. 

As you know more and more of the cre- 
ated world, you will find that the true will 
of its Maker is that its creatures should 
be happy; — that He has made everything 
beautiful in its time and its place, and that 
it is chiefly by the fault of men, when 
they are allowed the liberty of thwarting 
His laws, that Creation groans or travails 
in pain. The Love of God exists, and you 
may see it, and live in it if you will. A 
Spirit does actually exist which teaches the 
ant her path, the bird her building, and 
men, in an instinctive and marvellous way, 
whatever lovely arts and noble deeds are 
possible to them. Without it you can do 
no good thing. ... In the possession of 
it is your peace and your power. 

— Lectures on Art, Lecture IV, p. 274. 

True criticism of art never can consist 
in the mere application of rules; it can 
be just only when it is founded on quick 
sympathy with the innumerable instincts 
and changeful efforts of human nature, 

47 



48 NATURE STUDIES. 

chastened and guided by unchanging love 
of all things that God has created to be 
beautiful, and pronounced to be good. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. II, p. 45. 

Forms are not beautiful because they are 
copied from Nature; only it is out of the 
power of man to conceive beauty without 
her aid. 

— Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. IV, p. 102. 

There are some landscapes w r hose best 
character is sparkling, and there is a pos- 
sibility of repose in the midst of brilliancy, 
or embracing it, — as on the fields of sum- 
mer sea, or summer land: 

" Calm, and deep peace, on this high wold, 
And on the dews that drench the furze, 
And on the silvery gossamers, 
That twinkle into green and gold" 

And there are colorists who can keep 
their quiet in the midst of a jewellery of 
light; but, for the most part, it is better 
to avoid breaking up either lines or 
masses by too many points, and to make 
the few points used exceedingly precious. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXIX, p. 340. 



NATURE AND ART. 49 

High art, consists neither in altering 
nor in improving Nature ; but in seeking 
throughout Nature for " whatsoever things 
are lovely, and whatsoever things are pure " ; 
in loving these, in displaying to the ut- 
most of the painter's power such loveli- 
ness as is in them, and directing the 
thoughts of others to them by winning 
art, or gentle emphasis. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. Ill, p. 60. 

The highest art in all kinds is that 
which conveys the most truth. 

— Arrows of the CAace, Vol. I, Letter VI, p. 140. 

Art, followed as such, and for its own 
sake, irrespective of the interpretation of 
Nature by it, is destructive of whatever is 
best and noblest in humanity ; but Nature 
however simply observed, or imperfectly 
known, is, in the degree of the affection 
felt for it, protective and helpful to all 
that is noblest in humanity. . . . 

... So long as Art is steady in the con- 
templation and exhibition of natural facts, so 
long she herself lives and grows ; and in her 
own life and growth partly implies, partly 
secures, that of the nation in the midst of 
which she is practised. . . . 



5o NATURE STUDIES. 

Review for yourself the history of art, and 
you will find this to be a manifest certainty, 
that no great school ever yet existed which 
had not for primal aim the representation 
of some natural fact as truly as possible. 
Wheresoever the search after truth begins, 
there life begins; wheresoever that search 
ceases, there life ceases. . . . 

Depend upon it, the first universal char- 
acteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as 
the second is Truth. . . . Seize hold of God's 
hand and look full in the face of His crea- 
tion, and there is nothing He will not enable 
you to achieve. 

Thus, then, you will find — and the more 
profound and accurate your knowledge 
of the history of art the more assuredly 
you will find — that the living power in 
all the real schools, be they great or small, 
is love of Nature. 

— The Two Paths, Lecture I, pp. 16-30. 

He who is closest to Nature is best. All 
rules are useless, all labor is useless, if you 
do not give facts. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part IV, Chap. X, p. 172. 

I suppose you will not wish me to spend 
any time in proving that imagination must 



NATURE AND ART. 51 

be vigorous in proportion to the quantity 
of material which it has to handle: and 
that, just as we increase the range of what 
we see, we increase the richness of what we 
can imagine. Granting this, consider what 
a field is opened to your fancy merely in 
the subject-matter which architecture admits. 
Nearly every other art is severely limited in 
its subjects. . . . But is there anything within 
range of sight, or conception, which may not 
be of use to you, or in which your interest 
may not be excited with advantage to your 
art? . . . 

. . . All the wide world of vegetation 
blooms and bends for you ; the leaves trem- 
ble that you may bid them be still under 
the marble snow; the thorn and the thistle, 
which the earth casts forth as evil, are to 
you the kindliest servants ; no dying petal, 
nor drooping tendril, is so feeble as to have 
no more help for you; no robed pride of 
blossom so kingly, but it will lay aside its 
purple to receive at your hands the pale 
immortality. Is there anything in common 
life too mean, — in common things too triv- 
ial, — to be ennobled by your touch ? 

As there is nothing in life, so there is 
nothing in lifelessness which has not its 
lesson for you, or its gift; and when you 



52 NATURE STUDIES. 

are tired of watching the strength of the 
plume and the tenderness of the leaf, you 
may walk down to your rough river shore, 
or into the thickest markets of your thor- 
oughfares, and there is not a piece of torn 
cable that will not turn into a perfect 
moulding. . . . Yes, and if you gather up the 
very sand, and break the stone on which 
you tread, among its fragments of all but 
invisible shells you will find forms that will 
take their place, and that proudly, among 
the starred traceries of your vaulting: and 
you, who can crown the mountain with its 
fortress, and the city with its towers, are 
thus able also to give beauty to ashes, and 
worthiness to dust. . . . 

. . . Do not think it wasted time to sub- 
mit yourselves to any influence which may 
bring upon you any noble feeling. Rise 
early, always watch the sunrise, and the 
way the clouds break from the dawn; you 
will cast your statue-draperies in quite 
another than your common way, when the 
remembrance of that cloud motion is with 
you, and of the scarlet vesture of the 
morning. Live always in the springtime 
in the country; you do not know what 
leaf-form means, unless you have seen the 
buds burst, and the young leaves breathing 



NATURE AND ART. 53 

low in the sunshine, and wondering at the 
first shower of rain. 

— The Two Paths, Lecture IV, pp. 95, 96, 100. 

Where does Nature pause in her finish- 
ing — that finishing which consists not in 
the smoothing of surface, but the filling 
of space, and the multiplication of life 
and thought ? 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. IX, p. 166. 

All most lovely forms and thoughts are 
directly taken from natural objects. 

— Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. IV, p. 101. 

The things which Art does care to 
know, are these: that in the heavens God 
hath set a tabernacle for the sun, "which 
is as a bridegroom coming out of his 
chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to 
run a race. His going forth is from the 
end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the 
ends of it, and there is nothing hid from 
the heat thereof." 

This, then, being the kind of truth with 
which Art is exclusively concerned, how 
is such truth as this to be ascertained 
and accumulated? Evidently, and only, 
by perception and feeling. Neither either 



54 NATURE STUDIES. 

by reasoning or report. Nothing must 
come between Nature and the artists 
sight ; nothing between God and the artist's 
soul. Neither calculation nor hearsay, — be 
it the most subtle of calculations, or the 
wisest of sayings, — may be allowed to come 
between the universe and the witness which 
Art bears to its visible nature. . . . 

The whole function of the artist in the 
world is to be a seeing and feeling crea- 
ture; to be an instrument of such tender- 
ness and sensitiveness, that no shadow, 
no hue, no line, no instantaneous and 
evanescent expression of the visible things 
around him, nor any of the emotions 
which they are capable of conveying to 
the spirit which has been given him, shall 
either be left unrecorded, or fade from 
the book of record. There is no great 
painter, no great workman in any art, but 
he sees more with the glance of a mo- 
ment than he could learn by the labor of 
a thousand hours. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. Ill, Chap. II, pp. 40, 41. 

What is the purpose of your decora- 
tion ? . . . We profess that it is to honor 
the Deity; or, in other words, that it is 
pleasing to Him that we should delight 



NATURE AND ART. 55 

our eyes with blue and golden colors, and 
solemnise our spirits by the sight of large 
stones laid one on another, and ingen- 
iously carved. 

I do not think it can be doubted that 
it is pleasing to Him when we do this ; 
for He has Himself prepared for us, nearly 
every morning and evening, windows 
painted with Divine art, in blue and gold 
and vermilion ; windows lighted from within 
by the lustre of that heaven which we 
may assume, at least with more certainty 
than any consecrated ground, to be one of 
His dwelling-places. Again, in every moun- 
tain side, and cliff of rude seashore, He 
has heaped stones one upon another of 
greater magnitude than those of Chartres 
Cathedral, and sculptured them with floral 
ornament,— surely not less sacred because 
living? 

Must it not then be only because we 
love our own work better than His, that 
we respect the lucent glass, but not the 
lucent clouds; that we weave embroidered 
robes with ingenious fingers, and make 
bright the gilded vaults we have beauti- 
fully ordained — while yet we have not 
considered the heavens the work of His 
fingers : nor the stars of the strange vault 



5 6 NATURE STUDIES. 

which He has ordained. And do we dream 
that by carving fonts and lifting pillars in 
His honor, who cuts the way of the rivers 
among the rocks, and at whose reproof the 
pillars of the earth are astonished, we shall 
obtain pardon for the dishonor done to the 
hills and streams by which He has appointed 
our dwelling-place; — for the infection of 
their sweet air with poison; — for the burn- 
ing up their tender grass and flowers with 

tire. ... — Lectures on Art, Lect. II, p. 237. 

The first thing we have to ask of dec- 
oration is that it should indicate strong 
liking, and that honestly. . . . 

The second requirement in decoration, 
is a sign of our liking the right thing. 
And the right thing to be liked is God's 
work, which He made for our delight and 
contentment in this world. And all noble 
ornamentation is the expression of man's 
delight in God's work. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. II, p. 56. 

This infinite universe is unfathomable, 
inconceivable, in its whole; every human 
creature must slowly spell out, and long 
contemplate, such part of it as may be 
possible for him to reach; then set forth 



NATURE AND ART. 57 

what he has learned of it for those beneath 
him; extricating it from infinity, as one 
gathers a violet out of grass ; one does not 
improve either violet or grass in gathering 
it, but one makes the flower visible; and 
the human being has to make its power 
upon his own heart visible also, and to give 
it the honor of the good thoughts it has 
raised up in him, and to write upon it the 
history of his own soul. And sometimes 
he may be able to do more than this, and 
to set it in strange lights, and display it 
in a thousand ways before unknown : ways 
specially directed to necessary and noble 
purposes, for which he had to choose in- 
struments out of the wide armory of God. 
All this he may do-: and in this he is only 
doing what every Christian has to do with 
the written, as well as the created word, 
"rightly dividing the word of truth." 

— Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXX, p. 344. 

Beware, in going to nature, of taking 
the commonplace dogmas or dicta of art. 
Look not for what is like Titian or like 
Claude — but believe that everything which 
God has made is beautiful, and that every- 
thing which Nature teaches is true. 

— Arrows of the Chace, Letter I, p. 38. 



58 NATURE STUDIES. 

There is but one grand style in the treat- 
ment of all subjects, whatsoever, and that 
style is based on the perfect knowledge, 
and consists in the simple, unencumbered 
rendering of the specific characters of the 
given object. Every change, or abandon- 
ment of such specific character, is as de- 
structive of grandeur as it is of truth, 
of beauty, of propriety. Every alteration of 
the features of nature has its origin either 
in powerless indolence or blind audacity, 
in the folly which forgets, or the insolence 
which desecrates, works which it is the pride 
of angels to know, and their privilege to love. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. I, Preface to Second Edition, p. 27. 

An architect should live as little in cities 
as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let 
him study there what nature understands by 
a buttress, and what by a dome. 

— Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. Ill, p. 99. 

Human Art can only flourish when its 
dew is Affection: its air, Devotion; the rock 
of its roots, Patience; and its sunshine, God. 

— The Laws of Fe sole, Chap. X, p. 135. 

We need not hope to be able to imi- 
tate, in general work, any of the subtly 



NATURE AND ART. 59 

combined curvatures of Nature's highest 
designing; on the contrary, their extreme 
refinement renders them unfit for coarse 
service or material. Lines which are lovely 
in the pearly film of the Nautilus shell, 
are lost in the gray roughness of stone; 
and those which are sublime in the blue 
of far away hills, are weak in the sub- 
stance of incumbent marble. . . . 

. . . No sculptor can in the least imitate 
the peculiar character of accidental fracture : 
he can obey or exhibit the laws of Nature, 
but he cannot copy the felicity of her 
fancies, nor follow the steps of her fury. 
The very glory of a mountain is in the 
revolutions which raised it into power, and 
the forces which are striking it into ruin. 
But we want no cold and careful imitation 
of catastrophe; no calculated mockery of 
convulsion; no delicate recommendation 
of ruin. We are to follow the labor of 
Nature, but not her disturbance ; to imitate 
what she has deliberately ordained, not 
what she has violently suffered, or strangely 
permitted. . . . Beautiful ornament, wher- 
ever found, or however invented, is always 
either an intentional or unintentional copy 
of some constant natural form. 

r— The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XX, pp. 224, 225. 



60 NATURE STUDIES. 

For prolonged entertainment, no picture 
can be compared with the wealth of interest 
which may be found in the herbage of 
the poorest field, or blossoms of the nar- 
rowest copse. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. I, p. 249. 

The art of man is the expression of his 
rational and disciplined delight in the forms 
and laws of the creation of which he forms 
a part. . . . Fix, then, this in your mind — 
that your art is to be the praise of some- 
thing that you love, — be you small or great, 
what healthy art is possible to you must 
be the expression of your true delight in 
a real thing, better than the art. 

— The Laws of Fesole> Chap. I, pp. 11, 12. 

Many forest trees present, in their acci- 
dental contortions, types of the most com- 
plicated spiral shafts, the plan being origi- 
nally of a graceful shaft rising from several 
roots; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find 
models for every kind of shaft decoration, 
so graceful or so gorgeous, as he will find 
in the great forest aisle, when the strength 
of the earth itself seems to rise from the 
roots into the vaulting: but the shaft sur- 
face, barred as it expands with wings of 



NATURE AND ART. 61 

ebony and silver, is fretted with traceries 
of ivy, marbled with purple moss, veined 
with gray lichen, and tessellated by the rays 
of the rolling heaven, with flitting fancies 
of blue shadow and burning gold. 

— The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XXVI, p. 299. 

The greater part of those delights by 
which Nature recommends herself to man at 
all times, cannot be conveyed by his imita- 
tive work. He cannot make his grass green 
and cool and good to rest upon, which 
in Nature is its chief use to man ; nor 
can he make his flowers tender and full 
of color and of scent, which in Nature 
are their chief powers of giving joy. Those 
qualities which alone he can secure are 
certain severe characters of form, such as 
men only see in Nature on deliberate 
examination, and by the full and set appli- 
ance of sight and thought; a man must 
lie down on the bank of grass on his 
breast and set himself to watch and pene- 
trate the intertwining of it, before he finds 
that which is good to be gathered by the 
architect. So then while Nature is at all 
times pleasant to us, and while the sight 
and sense of her work may mingle hap- 
pily with all our thoughts, and labors, and 



62 NATURE STUDIES. 

times of existence, that image of her which 
the architect carries away represents what 
we can only perceive in her by direct 
intellectual exertion of a similar kind in 
order to understand it and feel it. 

— T7ie Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. IV, p. 113. 

All art, and all Nature, depend on the 
" disposition of masses." Painting, sculpture, 
music and poetry, depend equally on the 
"proportion," whether of colors, stones, 
notes, or words. Proportion is a principle, 
not of architecture, but of existence. It is 
by the law of proportion that stars shine, 
that mountains stand, and rivers flow. 

— Lectures on Architecture and Painting ; Lecture I, p. 274. 

The true ideal of landscape is precisely 
the same as that of the human form; it 
is the expression of the specific — not the 
individual, but the specific — characters of 
every object, in their perfection; there is 
an ideal form of every herb, flower, and 
tree: it is that form to which every 
individual of the species has a tendency 
to arrive, freed from the influence of acci- 
dent or disease. Every landscape painter 
should have the specific characters of every 
object he has to represent, rock, flower, or 



NATURE AND ART. 63 

cloud; and in his highest ideal works, 
all their distinctions will be perfectly ex- 
pressed, broadly or delicately, slightly or 
completely, according to the nature of the 
subject, and the degree of attention which 
is to be drawn to the particular object by 
the part it plays in the composition. . . . 

. . . Botanical or geological details are 
not to be given as matters of curiosity 
or subject of search, but as the ultimate 
elements of every species of expression 
and order of loveliness. . . . 

. . . Every herb and flower of the field 
has its specific, distinct, and perfect beauty; 
it has its peculiar habitation, expression 
and function. The highest art is that 
which seizes this specific character, which 
develops and illustrates it, which assigns 
to it its proper position in the landscape, 
and which, by means of it, enhances and 
enforces the great impression which the 
picture is intended to convey. Nor is it 
of herbs and flowers alone that such sci- 
entific representation is required. Every 
class of rock, every kind of earth, every 
form of cloud, must be studied with equal 
industry, and rendered with equal pre- 
cision. . . . 

. . . Generalization, as the word is com- 



64 NATURE STUDIES. 

monly understood, is the act of a vulgar, 
incapable, and unthinking mind. To see 
in all mountains nothing but similar heaps 
of earth; in all rocks, nothing but similar 
concretions of solid matter ; in all trees, 
nothing but similar accumulations of leaves, 
is no sign of high feeling or extended 
thought. The more we know, and the 
more we feel, the more we separate ; we sepa- 
rate to obtain a more perfect unity. , 

— Modern Painters, Vol.1, Preface, pp. 28-39. 

Of all embellishments by which the 
efforts of man can enhance the beauty of 
natural scenery, those are the most effect- 
ive which can give animation to the scene, 
while the spirit which they bestow is in 
unison with its general character. It is 
generally desirable to indicate the pres- 
ence of animated existence in a scene of 
natural beauty; but only of such existence 
as shall be imbued with the spirit, and 
shall partake of the essence, of the beauty, 
which, without it, would be dead. 

— The Poetry of Architecture, p. 9. 

It is ordained that, for our encourage- 
ment, every step we make in the more 
exalted range of science adds something 



NATURE AND ART. 65 

also to its practical applicabilities ; that all 
the great phenomena of nature, the knowl- 
edge of which is desired by the angels 
only, by us partly, as it reveals to farther 
vision the being and the glory of Him in 
whom they rejoice and we live, dispense 
yet such kind influences and so much of 
material blessing as to be joyfully felt by 
all inferior creatures, and to be desired by 
them with such single desire as the imper- 
fection of their nature may admit; that 
the strong torrents which, in their own 
gladness fill the hills with hollow thunder 
and the vales with winding light, have yet 
their bounden charge of field to feed and 
barge to bear ; that the fierce flames to 
which the Alp owes its upheaval and the 
volcano its terror, temper for us the metal 
vein and quickening spring; and that for 
our incitement, I say not our reward, for 
knowledge is its own reward, herbs have 
their healing, stones their preciousness, 
and stars their times. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part III, Sect. 1, Chap. I, p. 228. 

Nature is never mechanical in her ar- 
rangements; she never allows two mem- 
bers of her composition exactly to corre- 
spond : accordingly, in every piece of art 



66 NATURE STUDIES. 

which is to combine, without gradations, 
with landscape (as must always be the 
case in monuments) we must not allow a 
multitude of similar members; the design 
must be a dignified and simple whole. 

— The Poetry of Architecture ', p. 171. 

The word truth, as applied to art, sig- 
nifies the faithful statement, either to the 
mind or senses, of any fact of Nature. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Part I, Sect. 1, Chap. V, p. 95. 

Every geological formation has features 
entirely peculiar to itself: definite lines of 
fracture, giving rise to fixed resultant forms 
of rock and earth ; peculiar vegetable prod- 
ucts, among which still farther distinc- 
tions are wrought out by variations of 
climate and elevation. From such modi- 
fying circumstances, arise the infinite vari- 
eties of the orders of landscape, of which 
each one shows perfect harmony among 
its several features, and possesses an ideal 
beauty of its own. . . . The level marshes 
and rich meadows of the tertiary, the rounded 
swells and short pastures of the chalk, the 
square-built cliffs and cloven dells of the 
lower limestone, the soaring peaks and ridgy 
precipices of the primaries, having nothing 



NATURE AND ART. 67 

in common among them — nothing which is 
not distinctive and incommunicable. Their 
very atmospheres are different — their clouds 
are different — their humors of storm and 
sunshine are different — their flowers, ani- 
mals and forests are different. By each order 
of landscape — and its orders, I repeat, are 
infinite in number, corresponding not only 
to the several species of rock, but to the 
particular circumstances of the rock's depo- 
sition or after treatment, and to the in- 
calculable varieties of climate, aspect, and 
human interference: by each order of land- 
scape, I say, peculiar lessons are intended 
to be taught, and distinct pleasures to be 
conveyed: and it is as utterly futile to talk 
of generalizing their impressions into an 
ideal landscape, as to talk of amalgamating 
all nourishment into one ideal food, gather- 
ing all music into one ideal movement, 
or confounding all thought into one ideal 
idea. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Preface to Second Edition, p. 40. 

No picture can be good which deceives 
by its imitation, for the very reason that 
nothing can be beautiful which is not true. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Part I, Sect. I, Chap. V, p. 99. 



68 NATURE STUDIES. 

In the edifices of Man there should be 
found reverent worship and following, not 
only of the spirit which rounds the pillars of 
the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue 
— which gives veining to the leaf, and polish 
to the shell, and grace to every pulse that 
agitates animal organization — but of that 
also which reproves the pillars of the earth, 
and builds up her barren precipices into the 
coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy 
cones of mountain purple into the pale arch 
of the sky. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture ; Chap. Ill, p. 72. 

It is always to be remembered that no one 
mind is like another, either in its powers or 
perceptions ; and while the main principles 
of training must be the same for all, the re- 
sult in each will be as various as the kinds 
of truth which each will apprehend; there- 
fore, also, the modes of effort, even in men 
whose inner principles and final aims are 
exactly the same. Suppose, for instance, two 
men, equally honest, equally industrious, 
equally impressed with a humble desire to 
render some part of what they saw in 
Nature faithfully. . . . But one of them is 
quiet in temperament, has a feeble memory, 
no invention, and excessively keen sight. 



NATURE AND ART. 69 

The other is impatient in temperament, has 
a memory which nothing escapes, an inven- 
tion which never rests, and is comparatively 
near-sighted. 

Set them both free in the same field in a 
mountain valley. One sees everything, small 
and large, with almost the same clearness ; 
mountains and grasshoppers alike; the 
leaves on the branches, the veins in the peb- 
bles, the bubbles in the stream ; but he can 
remember nothing, and invent nothing. . . . 

Meantime the other has been watching the 
change of the clouds, and the march of the 
light along the mountain sides ; he beholds 
the entire scene in broad, soft masses of true 
gradation, and the very feebleness of his 
sight is in some sort an advantage to him, in 
making him more sensible of the aerial mys- 
tery of distance, and hiding from him the 
multitudes of circumstances which it would 
have been impossible for him to represent. 
But there is not one change in the casting of 
the jagged shadows along the hollows of the 
hills, but it is fixed on his mind forever; not 
a flake of spray has broken from the sea of 
cloud about their bases, but he has watched 
it as it melts away, and could recall it to its 
lost place in heaven by the slightest effort of 
his thoughts. . . . 



70 NATURE STUDIES. 

Fancy how his paper will be covered with 
stray symbols and blots, and undecipherable 
short-hand: — as for his sitting down to 
"draw from Nature," there was not one of 
the things which he wished to represent 
that stayed for so much as five seconds to- 
gether ; but none of them escaped, for all 
that: they are sealed up in that strange store- 
house of his ; he may take one of them out, 
perhaps this day twenty years, and paint it 
in his dark room far away. Now, observe, 
you may tell both of these men, when they 
are young, that they are to be honest, that 
they have an important function, and that 
they are not to care what Raphael did. This 
you may wholesomely impress on them both. 
But fancy the exquisite absurdity of expecting 
either of them to possess any of the qualities 

Of the Other. — Pre-Raphaelilism, pp. 252, 254. 

To my own mind, there is no more beauti- 
ful proof of benevolent design in the creation 
of the earth, than the exact adaptation of its 
materials to the art-power of man. The plas- 
ticity and constancy under fire of clay : the 
ductility and fusibility of gold and iron: 
the consistent softness of marble, and the 
fibrous toughness of wood, are in each 
material carried to the exact degree which 



NATURE AND ART. 71 

renders them provocative of skill by their 
resistance, and full of reward for it by their 

Compliance. — The Art of England, Lecture V, p. 322. 

I would rather teach drawing that my 
pupils may learn to love Nature, than teach 
the looking at Nature that they may learn 

to draw. — Elements of Drawing, Preface, p. 226. 

Observe that you do not wilfully use the 
realistic power of art to convince yourselves 
of historical or theological statements which 
you cannot otherwise prove, and which you 
wish to prove: — on the other hand, that 
you do not check your imagination and 
conscience while seizing the truths of which 
they alone are cognizant, because you value 
too highly the scientific interest which 
attaches to the investigation of second 
causes. 

For instance, it may be quite possible to 
show the conditions in water and electricity 
which necessarily produce the craggy out- 
line, the apparently self-contained silvery 
light, and the sulphurous blue shadow of 
a thunder-cloud, and which separate these 
from the depth of the golden peace in the 
dawn of a summer morning. . . . But it is 
the function of the rightly-trained imagina- 



72 NATURE STUDIES. 

tion to recognise, in these, and such other 
relative aspects, the unity of teaching which 
impresses, alike on our senses and our con- 
science, the eternal difference between good 
and evil : and the rule, over the clouds of 
heaven and over the creatures in the earth, 
of the same Spirit which teaches to our own 
hearts the bitterness of death, and strength 

Of love. — Lectures on Art, Lecture II, p. 225. 

The moral temper of the workman is 
shown by his lovely forms and thoughts to 
express, as well as by the force of his hand 

in expression. —Lectures on Art, Lecture III, p. 245. 

As soon as you have obtained the power 
of drawing, I do not say a mountain, but 
even a stone accurately, you will find that in 
the grain, the lustre, and the cleavage-lines 
of the smallest fragment of rock, there are 
recorded forces of every order and magnitude, 
from those which raise a continent by one vol- 
canic effort, to those which at every instant 
are polishing the apparently complete crystal 
in its nest, and conducting the apparently 
motionless metal in its vein, and that only 
by the art of your own hand, and fidelity of 
sight which it developes, you can obtain true 
perception of these invincible and inimitable 



NATURE AND ART. 73 

arts of the earth herself : while the compara- 
tively slight effort necessary to obtain so 
much skill as may serviceably draw moun- 
tains in distant effect will be instantly 
rewarded by what is almost equivalent to 
a new sense of the conditions of their 

Structure. — Lectures on Art, Lecture IV, p. 263. 

The good architects have generally been 
content, with God's arch, the arch of the 
rainbow and of the apparent heaven, and 
which the sun shapes for us as it sets and 

rises. — The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. X, p. 134. 

Oh, if people did but know how many 
lines nature suggests without showing, what 
different art should we have ! 

— Arrows of the Chace, Letter I, p. 37. 

Every archaeologist, every natural phil- 
osopher, knows that there is a peculiar rigid- 
ity of mind brought on by long devotion 
to logical and analytical inquiries. . . . The 
man who has gone, hammer in hand, over 
the surface of a romantic country, feels no 
longer, in the mountain ranges he has so 
laboriously explored, the sublimity or mys- 
tery with which they were veiled when he 
first beheld them, and with which they are 



74 NATURE STUDIES. 

adorned in the mind of the passing traveller. 
. . . And it would be with infinite gratitude 
that he would regard the man, who, retain- 
ing in his delineation of natural scenery a 
fidelity to the facts of science so rigid as 
to make his work at once acceptable and 
credible to the most sternly critical intellect, 
should yet invest its features again with the 
sweet veil of their daily aspect: should make 
them dazzling with the splendor of wander- 
ing light, and involve them in the unsearch- 
ableness of stormy obscurity : should restore 
to the divided anatomy its visible vitality of 
operation, clothe naked crags with soft for- 
ests, enrich the mountain ruins with bright 
pastures, and lead the thoughts from the 
monotonous recurrence of the phenomena 
of the physical world, to the sweet interests 
and sorrows of human life and death. 

— Pre-Raphaelitism, pp. 279, 280. 

Good painting, like nature's own work, is 
infinite, and unreduceable. 

— The Elements of Perspective^ Problem XX, p. 379. 

We lay it down for a first principle, that 
our graphic art, whether painting or sculp- 
ture, is to produce something which shall 
look as like Nature as possible. But now 



NATURE AND ART. 75 

we must go one step farther, and say that 
it is to produce what shall look like Nature 
to people who know what Nature is like ! 
You see this is at once a great restriction, as 
well as a great exaltation of our aim. 

— Aralra Pentelici, Lecture IV, p. 358. 

The teaching of Nature is as varied and 
infinite as it is constant ; and the duty of the 
painter is to watch for every one of her les- 
sons, and to give those in which she has 
manifested each of her principles in the 
most peculiar and striking way. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. I, Chap. IV, p. 147. 

I think I am justified in considering those 
forms to be most natural which are most fre- 
quent ; or, rather, that on the shapes which 
in the every-day world are familiar to the 
eyes of men, God has stamped those charac- 
ters of beauty which He has made it man's 
nature to love. ... By frequency I mean 
that limited and isolated frequency, which 
is characteristic of all perfection ; not mere 
multitude; as a rose is a common flower, but 
yet there are not so many roses on the tree 
as there are leaves. In this respect Nature 
is sparing of her highest, and lavish of her 
less, beauty ; but I call the flower as frequent 



76 NATURE STUDIES. 

as the leaf, because, each in its allotted quan- 
tity, where the one is, there will ordinarily be 
the other. 

— Seven Lamps of Architecture, Lecture IV, pp. 102, 103. 

In all drawing and sculpture, it is the 
power of rounding, softly and perfectly, every 
inferior mass which preserves the serenity, 
as it follows the truth, of Nature, and which 
demands the highest knowledge and skill 
from the workman. 

— Seven Lamps of Architecture, Letter III, p. 90. 

It is one of the eternal principles of Nature, 
that she will not have one line nor color, 
nor one portion, nor atom of space without 
a change in it. There is not one of her 
shadows, tints, or lines that is not in a state 
of perpetual variation: I do not mean in 
time, but in space. There is not a leaf in 
the world which has the same color visible 
over its whole surface ; it has a white high- 
light somewhere; and in proportion as it 
curves to or from that focus, the color is 
brighter or grayer. Pick up a common flint 
from the roadside, and count, if you can, 
its changes and hues of color. Every bit 
of bare ground under your feet has in it a 
thousand such — the gray pebbles, the warm 



NATURE AND ART. ' 77 

ochre, the green of incipient vegetation, the 
grays and blacks of its reflexes and shadows, 
might keep a painter at work for a month, 
if he were obliged to follow them touch for 
touch: how much more, when the same 
infinity of change is carried out with vast- 
ness of object and space. 

—Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. II, Chap. II, pp. 271, 272. 

Consider what marble seems to have been 
made for. Over the greater part of the 
surface of the world, we find that a rock 
has been providentially distributed, in a man- 
ner particularly pointing it out as intended 
for the service of man. Not altogether a 
common rock, it is yet rare enough to 
command a certain degree of interest and 
attention wherever it is found; but not so 
rare as to preclude its use for any pur- 
pose to which it is fitted. It is exactly of 
the consistence which is best adapted for 
sculpture: that is to say, neither hard nor 
brittle, nor flaky nor splintery, but uniform, 
and delicately, yet not ignobly, soft, — exactly 
soft enough to allow the sculptor to work it 
without force, and trace on it the finest lines 
of finished form ; and yet so hard as never to 
betray the touch or moulder away beneath 
the steel ; and so admirably crystallized, and 



78 NATURE STUDIES. 

of such permanent elements, that no rains 
dissolve it, no time changes it, no atmos- 
phere decomposes it: once shaped, it is 
shaped forever, unless subjected to actual 
violence or attrition. This rock, then, is 
prepared by Nature for the sculptor and 
architect, just as paper is prepared by the 
manufacturer for the artist, with as great — 
nay, with greater — care, and more perfect 
adaptation of the material to the require- 
ments. And of this marble paper, some is 
white and some colored ; but more is colored 
than white, because the white is evidently 
meant for sculpture, and the colored for the 
covering of large surfaces. 

Now, if we would take Nature at her word, 
and use this precious paper which she has 
taken so much care to provide for us (it is 
a long process, the making of that paper; 
the pulp of it needing the subtlest possible 
solution, and the pressing of it — for it is all 
hot-pressed — having to be done under the 
saw, or under something at least as heavy) ; 
if, I say, we use it as Nature would have 
us, consider what advantages would follow. 
The colors of marble are mingled for us just 
as if on a prepared palette. They are of all 
shades and hues (except bad ones), some 
being united and even, some broken, mixed, 



NATURE AND ART. 79 

and interrupted, in order to supply, as far as 
possible, the want of the painter's power of 
breaking and mingling the color with the 
brush. But there is more in the colors than 
this delicacy of adaptation. There is history 
in them. By the manner in which they are 
arranged in every piece of marble, they 
record the means by which that marble has 
been produced, and the successive changes 
through which it has passed. And in all 
their veins and zones, and flame-like stain- 
ings, or broken and disconnected lines, they 
write various legends, never untrue, of the 
former political state of the mountain king- 
dom to which they belonged, of its infirmities 
and fortitudes, convulsions and consolida- 
tions, from the beginning of time. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. Ill, Chap. I, pp. 30, 31, 32. 

From young artists in landscape, nothing 
ought to be tolerated but simple bona fide 
imitations of Nature. Their duty is neither 
to choose, nor compose, nor imagine, nor 
experimentalize: but to be humble and ear- 
nest in following the steps of Nature, and 
tracing the finger of God. 

—Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. VI, Chap. Ill, p. 209. 



SKY AND CLOUD. 



I hope to show, . . . what noble things these 
clouds are, and with what feeling it seems to be 
intended by their Creator that we should contemplate 
them. —Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. VI, p. 113. 



III. 

SKY AND CLOUD. 

I understand the making- the firmament 
to signify that, so far as man is concerned, 
most magnificent ordinance of the clouds : — 
the ordinance, that as the great plain of waters 
was formed on the face of the earth, so also 
a plain of waters should be stretched along 
the height of air, and the face of the cloud 
answer the face of the ocean ; and that this 
upper and heavenly plain should be of 
waters, as it were, glorified in their nature, 
no longer quenching the fire, but now bear- 
ing fire in their .own bosoms; no longer 
murmuring only when the winds raise them 
or rocks divide, but answering each other 
with their own voices from pole to pole; 
no longer restrained by established shores, 
and guided through unchanging channels, 
but going forth at their pleasure like the 
armies of the angels, and choosing their 
encampments upon the heights of the hills ; 
no longer hurried downwards forever, mov- 
ing but to fall, nor lost in lightless accumu- 
lation of the abyss, but covering the east 
and west with the waving of their wings, 

83 



84 NATURE STUDIES. 

and robing the gloom of the farther infin- 
ite with a vesture of divers colors, of which 
the threads are purple and scarlet, and the 
embroideries flame. 

This I believe, is the ordinance of the 
firmament ; and it seems to me that in the 
midst of the material nearness of these 
heavens God means us to acknowledge His 
own immediate presence as visiting, judg- 
ing, and blessing us. . . . " He doth set His 
bow in the cloud," and thus renews, in the 
sound of every drooping swathe of rain, His 
promise of everlasting love. " In them hath 
He set a tabernacle for the sun"; whose 
burning ball, which without the firmament 
would be seen as an intolerable and scorch- 
ing circle in the blackness of vacuity, is by 
that firmament surrounded with gorgeous 
service, and tempered by mediatorial minis- 
tries : by the firmament of clouds the golden 
pavement is spread for His chariot wheels 
at morning ; by the firmament of clouds the 
temple is built for His presence to fill with 
light at noon ; by the firmament of clouds 
the purple veil is closed at evening round 
the sanctuary of His rest; by the mists of the 
firmament His implacable light is divided, 
and its separated fierceness appeased into 
the soft blue that fills the depth of distance 



SKY AND CLOUD. 85 

with its bloom, and the flush with which 
the mountains burn as they drink the over- 
flowing of the dayspring. And in this tab- 
ernacling of the unendurable sun with men, 
through the shadows of the firmament, God 
would seem to set forth the stooping of His 
own majesty to men, upon the throne of the 
firmament. . . . And all those passings to 
and fro of fruitful shower and grateful shade, 
and all those visions of silver palaces built 
about the horizon, and voices of moaning 
winds and threatening thunders, and glories 
of colored robe and cloven ray, are but to 
deepen in our hearts the acceptance and 
distinctness, and dearness of the simple 
words, " Our Father, which art in heaven." 

— Cceli Enarrant, Chap. I, pp. 159, 160. 
— Also Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. VI. 

The heavens declare — or make clear — the 
honour of God. . . . These heavens, are the 
real roof, as the earth is the real floor, of 
God's house for you here. . . . That word 
" cceli," in the first words of the Latin psalm, 
means the "hollow place." It is the great 
space, or, as we conceive it, vault, of Heaven. 
It shows the glory of God in the existence 
of the light by which we live. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. Ill, Letter LXXV, p. 402. 



86 NATURE STUDIES. 

It is a strange thing how little in general 
people know about the sky. It is the part 
of creation in which Nature has done more 
for the sake of pleasing man, more for the 
sole and evident purpose of talking to him 
and teaching him, than in any other of her 
works, and it is just the part in which we 
least attend to her. There are not many of 
her other works in which some more material 
or essential purpose than the mere pleasing 
of man is not answered by every part of their 
organization ; but every essential purpose of 
the sky might, so far as we know, be answered, 
if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great 
ugly black rain-cloud were brought up over 
the blue, and everything well watered, and so 
all left blue again till next time, with perhaps 
a film of morning and evening mist for dew. 
And instead of this, there is not a moment of 
any day of our lives, when Nature is not pro- 
ducing scene after scene, picture after picture, 
glory after glory, and working still upon such 
exquisite and constant principles of the most 
perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is 
all done for us, and intended for our per- 
petual pleasure. And every man, wherever 
placed, however far from other sources of 
interest or of beauty, has this done for him 
constantly. . . . The sky is for all ; bright as 



SKY AND CLOUD. 87 

it is, it is not " too bright, nor good, for human 
nature's daily food " ; it is fitted in all its 
functions for the perpetual comfort and ex- 
alting of the heart, for the soothing it and 
purifying it from its dross and dust. Some- 
times gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes 
awful, never the same for two moments to- 
gether : almost human in its passions, almost 
spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in 
its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in 
us, is as distinct, as its ministry of chastise- 
ment or of blessing to what is mortal is essen- 
tial. And yet we never attend to it, we never 
make it a subject of thought, but as it has to 
do with our animal sensations: . . . 

If in our moments of utter idleness and 
insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last re- 
source, which of its phenomena do we speak 
of? One says it has been wet, and another 
it has been windy, and another it has been 
warm. Who, among the whole chattering 
crowd, can tell me of the forms and the preci- 
pices of the chain of tall white mountains 
that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? 
Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out 
of the south, and smote upon their summits 
until they melted and mouldered away in a 
dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the 
dead clouds when the sunlight left them last 



88 NATURE STUDIES. 

night, and the west wind blew them before it 
like withered leaves ? All has passed, unre- 
gretted as unseen ; or if the apathy be ever 
shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by 
what is gross, or what is extraordinary; and 
yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifes- 
tations of the elemental energies, not in the 
clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirl- 
wind, that the highest characters of the sub- 
lime are developed. God is not in the earth- 
quake, nor in the fire, but in the still small 
voice. They are but the blunt and the low 
faculties of our nature, which can only be 
addressed through lampblack and lightning. 
It is in quiet and subdued passages of unob- 
trusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, and 
the perpetual, — that which must be sought 
ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood, 
— things which the angels work out for us 
daily, and yet vary eternally, which are never 
wanting, and never repeated, which are to be 
found always yet each found but once ; it is 
through these that the lesson of devotion 
is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty 
given. . . . 

I fully believe, little as people in general 
are concerned with art, more of their ideas 
of sky are derived from pictures than from 
reality, and that if we could examine the con- 



SKY AND CLOUD. 89 

ception formed in the minds of most educated 
persons when we talk of clouds, it would 
frequently be found composed of fragments 
of blue and white reminiscences of the old 
masters. . . . 

. . . Now, if there be one characteristic 
of the sky more valuable or necessary to 
be rendered than another, it is that which 
Wordsworth has given in the second book 
of the Excursion: — 

The chasm of sky above my head 
Is Heaven's profoundest azure. No domain 
For fickle, short-lived clouds, to occupy, 
Or to pass through ; — but rather an abyss 
In which the everlasting stars abide, [tempt 

And whose soft gloom, and boundless depth, might 
The curious eye to look for them by day. 

And, in his American Notes, I remember 
Dickens notices the same truth, describing 
himself as lying drowsily on the barge deck, 
looking not at, but through the sky. And 
if you look intensely at the pure blue of 
a serene sky, you will see that there is a 
variety and fulness in its very repose. It is 
not flat dead color, but a deep, quivering, 
transparent body of penetrable air, in which 
you trace or imagine short, falling spots of 
deceiving light, and dim shades, faint, veiled 
vestiges of dark vapor. 

—Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Part II, Sect. Ill, Chap. I, pp. 314-318. 



9 o NATURE STUDIES. 

Between the heaven and man came the 
cloud. 

Has the reader any distinct idea of what 
clouds are ? 

That mist which lies in the morning so 
softly in the valley, level and white, through 
which the tops of the trees rise as if through 
an inundation — why is it so heavy ? And 
why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and 
frail that it will melt away utterly into splen- 
dor of morning, when the sun has shone on 
it but a few moments more ? Those colossal 
pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as 
of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of 
the high sun full on their fiery flanks — why 
are they so light — their bases high over our 
heads, high over the heads of Alps? Why 
will these melt away, not as the sun rises, 
but as he descends, and leave the stars of 
twilight clear, while the valley vapor gains 
again upon the earth like a shroud ? Or 
that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder 
clump of pines ; nay, which does not steal 
by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet 
round them, and yet — and yet, slowly ; now 
falling in a fair waved line like a woman's 
veil; now fading, now gone; we look away 
for an instant, and look back, and it is there 
again. What has it to do with that clump 



SKY AND CLOUD. 91 

of pines, that it broods by them and waves 
itself among their branches, to and fro? 
Has it hidden a cloudy treasure among" the 
moss at their roots, which it watches thus? 
Or has some strong enchanter charmed it 
into fond returning, or bound it fast within 
those bars of bough? And yonder filmy 
crescent, bent like an archer's bow above 
the snowy summit, the highest of all the 
hill — that white arch which never forms 
but over the supreme crest — how is it 
stayed there, repelled apparently from the 
snow — nowhere touching it, the clear sky 
seen between it and the mountain edge, 
yet never leaving it — poised as a white 
bird hovers over its nest? 

Or those war-clouds that gather on the 
horizon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire; 
how is their barbed strength bridled ? What 
bits are these they are champing with their 
vaporous lips; flinging off flakes of black 
foam? Leagued leviathans of the Sea of 
Heaven, out of their nostrils goeth smoke, 
and their eyes are like the eyelids of the 
morning: the sword of him that layeth at 
them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor 
the habergeon. Where ride the captains of 
their armies ? Where are set the measures 
of their march ? Fierce murmurers, answer- 



92 NATURE STUDIES. 

ing each other from morning until even- 
ing — what rebuke is this which has awed 
them into peace? — what hand has reined 
them back by the way by which they came ? 

I know not if the reader will think at first 
that questions like these are easily answered. 
So far from it, I rather believe that some of 
the mysteries of the clouds never will be 
understood by us at all. " Knowest thou the 
balancing of the clouds ? " Is the answer 
ever to be one of pride? "The wondrous 
works of Him which is perfect in knowl- 
edge ? " Is our knowledge ever to be so ? 

It is one of the most discouraging con- 
sequences of the varied character of this 
work of mine, that I am wholly unable to 
take note of the advance of modern science. 
What has conclusively been discovered or 
observed about clouds I know not; but by 
the chance inquiry possible to me I find 
no book which fairly states the difficulties 
of accounting for even the ordinary aspects 
of the sky. I shall, therefore, be able to 
do little more than suggest inquiries to the 
reader, putting the subject in a clear form 
for him. All men accustomed to investiga- 
tion will confirm me in saying that it is a 
great step when we are personally quite cer- 
tain what we do not know. First, then, I 



SKY AND CLOUD, 93 

believe we do not know what makes clouds 
float. Clouds are water, in some form or 
another; but water is heavier than air, and 
the finest form you can give a heavy thing 
will not make it float in a light thing. On 
it, yes, as a boat ; but in it, no. Clouds are 
not boats, nor boatshaped, and they float in 
the air, not on the top of it. " Nay, but 
though unlike boats, may they not be like 
feathers? If out of quill substance there 
may be constructed eider-down, and out of 
vegetable tissue, thistle-down, both buoyant 
enough for a time, surely of water-tissue 
may be constructed also water-down, which 
will be buoyant enough for all cloudy pur- 
poses." Not so. Throw out your eider 
plumage in a calm day, and it will all come 
settling to the ground — slowly indeed, to 
aspect; but practically so fast that all 
our finest clouds would be here in a 
heap about our ears in an hour or two, if 
they were only made of water feathers. 
" But may they not be quill feathers, and 
have air inside them? May not all their 
particles be minute little balloons?" A 
balloon only floats when the air inside 
it is either specifically, or by heating, lighter 
than the air it floats in. If the cloud-feath- 
ers had warm air inside their quills, a cloud 



94 NATURE STUDIES. 

would be warmer than the air about it, 
which it is not (I believe). And if the 
cloud-feathers had hydrogen inside their 
quills, a cloud would be unwholesome for 
breathing, which it is not — at least so it 
seems to me. 

" But may they not have nothing inside their 
quills?" Then they would rise, as bubbles 
do through water, just as certainly as, if they 
were solid feathers, they would fall. All our 
clouds would go up to the top of the air, and 
swim in eddies of cloud-foam. 

" But is not that just what they do ? " No. 
They float at different heights, and with 
definite forms, in the body of the air itself. 
If they rose like foam, the sky on a cloudy 
day would look like a very large flat glass of 
champagne seen from below, with a stream 
of bubbles (or clouds) going up as fast as 
they could to a flat foam-ceiling. 

" But may they not be just so nicely 
mixed out of something and nothing, as to 
float where they are wanted ? " Yes : that is 
just what they not only may, but must be: 
only this way of mixing something and noth- 
ing is the very thing I want to explain or have 
explained, and cannot do it, nor get it done. 

Except thus far. It is conceivable that 
minute hollow spherical globules might be 



SKY AND CLOUD. 95 

formed of water, in which the enclosed vacu- 
ity just balanced the weight of the enclosing 
water, and that the arched sphere formed by 
the watery film was strong enough to pre- 
vent the pressure of the atmosphere from 
breaking it in. Such a globule would float 
like a balloon at the height in the atmosphere 
where the equipoise between the vacuum it 
enclosed, and its own excess of weight above 
that of the air, was exact. It would, prob- 
ably, approach its companion globules by 
reciprocal attraction, and form aggregations 
which might be visible. 

This is, I believe, the view usually taken 
by meteorologists. 

Nevertheless, I state it as a possibility only, 
not seeing how any known operation of phys- 
ical law could explain the formation of such 
molecules. This, however, is not the only dif- 
ficulty. Whatever shape the water is thrown 
into, it seems at first improbable that it should 
lose its property of wetness. Minute division 
of rain, as in " Scotch mist," makes it capable 
of floating farther, or floating up and down a 
little, just as dust will float, though pebbles 
will not ; or gold-leaf, though a sovereign will 
not ; but minutely divided rain wets as much 
as any other kind, whereas a cloud, partially 
always, sometimes entirely, loses its power 



96 NATURE STUDIES. 

of moistening. Some low clouds look, when 
you are in them, as if they were made of 
specks of dust, like short hair; and these 
clouds are entirely dry. And also many 
clouds will wet some substances, but not 
others. So that we must grant further, if 
we are to be happy in our theory, that the 
spherical molecules are held together by 
an attraction which prevents their adhering 
to any foreign body, or perhaps ceases only 
under some peculiar electric conditions. 

The question remains, even supposing their 
production accounted for — What intermedi- 
ate states of water may exist between these 
spherical hollow molecules and pure vapor? 

Has the reader ever considered the rela- 
tions of commonest forms of volatile sub- 
stance ? The invisible particles which cause 
the scent of a rose-leaf, how minute, how mul- 
titudinous, passing richly away into the air 
continually! The visible cloud of frankin- 
cense — why visible? Is it in consequence 
of the greater quantity, or larger size, of the 
particles, and how does the heat act in throw- 
ing them off in this quantity, or of this size ? 

Ask the same questions respecting water. 
It dries, that is, becomes volatile, invisibly, 
at (any ?) temperature. Snow dries, as water 
does. Under increase of heat, it volatilizes 



SKY AND CLOUD. 97 

faster, so as to become dimly visible in large 
mass, as a heat-haze. It reaches boiling-point, 
then becomes entirely visible. But compress 
it, so that no air shall get between the watery 
particles — it is invisible again. At the first 
issuing from the steam-pipe the steam is trans- 
parent ; but opaque, or visible, as it diffuses 
itself. The water is indeed closer, because 
cooler, in that diffusion : but more air is be- 
tween its particles. Then this very question 
of visibility is an endless one, wavering be- 
tween form of substance and action of light. 
The clearest (or least visible) stream becomes 
brightly opaque by more minute division in 
its foam, and the clearest dew in hoar-frost. 
Dust, unperceived in shade, becomes con- 
stantly visible in sunbeam ; and watery vapor 
in the atmosphere, which is itself opaque, 
when there is promise of fine weather, be- 
comes exquisitely transparent ; and (question- 
ably) blue, when it is going to rain. 

Questionably blue ; for beside knowing 
very little about water, we know what, except 
by courtesy, must, I think, be called Nothing 
— about air. Is it the watery vapor, or the 
air itself, which is blue ? Are neither blue, 
but only white, producing blue when seen over 
dark spaces? If either blue, or white, why, 
when crimson is their commanded dress, are 



98 NATURE STUDIES. 

the most distant clouds crimsonest ? Clouds 
close to us, may be blue, but far off, golden — 
a strange result, if the air is blue. And again, 
if blue, why are rays that come through large 
spaces of it red : and that Alp, or anything 
else that catches far-away light, why colored 
red at dawn and sunset? No one knows, I 
believe. It is true that many substances, as 
opal, are blue, or green, by reflected light, 
yellow by transmitted; but air, if blue at all, 
is blue always by transmitted light. . . . 

But further: these questions of volatility, 
and visibility, and hue, are all complicated 
with those of shape. How is a cloud out- 
lined ? Granted whatever you choose to ask 
concerning its material, or its aspect, its lofti- 
ness, and luminousness — how of its limita- 
tion ? What hews it into a heap, or spins it 
into a web ? Cold is usually shapeless, I sup- 
pose, extending over large spaces equally, or 
with gradual diminution. You cannot have, 
in the open air, angles, and wedges, and coils, 
and cliffs of cold. Yet the vapor stops sud- 
denly, sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts 
itself across the gates of heaven in likeness 
of a brazen bar; or braids itself in and out, 
and across and across, like a tissue of tapes- 
try; or falls into ripples, like sand; or into 
waving shreds and tongues, as fire. On what 



SKY AND CLOUD. 



99 



anvils and wheels is the vapor pointed, twisted, 
hammered, whirled, as the potter's clay? By 
what hands is the incense of the sea built up 
into domes of marble ? 

And lastly, all these questions respecting 
substance, and aspect and shape, and line, 
and division, are involved with others as 
inscrutable, concerning action. The curves 
in which clouds move are unknown — nay, 
the very method of their motion, or apparent 
motion, how far it is by change of place, how 
far by appearance in one place and vanish- 
ing from another. And these questions 
about movement lead partly far away into 
high mathematics, where I cannot follow 
them, and partly into theories concerning 
electricity and infinite space, where I sup- 
pose at present no one can follow them. 

What, then, is the use of asking the ques- 
tions ? 

For my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and 
perhaps the reader may. I think he ought. 
He should not be less grateful for summer 
rain, or see less beauty in the clouds of 
morning, because they come to prove him 
with hard questions : to which, perhaps, if we 
look close at the heavenly scroll, we may find 
also a syllable or two of answer illuminated 

here and there. — CceK Enarrant, Chap. II, pp. 161-168. 
— Also Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VII, Chap. I. 

lire 



ioo NATURE STUDIES. 

At whatever height they form, clouds may 
be broadly considered as of two species only, 
massive and striated. 

The upper clouds, owing to their quiet- 
ness and multitude, we may, perhaps, con- 
veniently think of as the " cloud-flocks." . . . 
Flocks of Admetus under Apollo's keeping. 
Who else could shepherd such? He by 
day, dog Sirius by night : or huntress Diana 
herself — her bright arrows driving away 
the clouds of prey that would ravage her 
fair flocks. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. V, Part VII, Chap. II, pp. 149, 151. 

Between the flocks of small countless 
clouds which occupy the highest heavens, 
and the gray undivided film of the true rain- 
cloud, form the fixed masses or torn fleeces, 
sometimes collected, and calm, sometimes 
fiercely drifting, which are, nevertheless, 
known under one general name of cumulus, 
or heaped cloud. 

The true cumulus, the most majestic 
of all clouds, and almost the only one 
which attracts the notice of ordinary ob- 
servers, is for the most part windless: the 
movement of its masses being solemn, con- 
tinuous, inexplicable, a steady advance or 
retiring, as if they were animated by an 



SKY AND CLOUD. 101 

inner will, or compelled by an unseen power. 
They appear to be peculiarly connected 
with heat, forming perfectly only in the 
afternoon, and melting away in the even- 
ing. Their noblest conditions are strongly 
electric, and connect themselves with storm- 
cloud and true thunder-cloud. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VII, Chap. Ill, p. 165. 

Stand upon the peak of some isolated 
mountain at daybreak, when the night mists 
first rise from off the plains, and watch their 
white and lake-like fields as they float in 
level bays and winding gulfs about the 
islanded summits of the lower hills, un- 
touched yet by more than dawn, colder and 
more quiet than a windless sea under the 
moon of midnight; watch when the first 
sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, 
how the foam of their undulating surface 
parts and passes away: and down under 
their depths, the glittering city and green 
pasture lie like Atlantis, between the white 
paths of winding rivers: the flakes of light 
falling every moment faster and broader 
among the starry spires, as the wreathed 
surges break and vanish above them, and 
the confused crests and ridges of the dark 
hills shorten their gray shadows upon the 



io2 NATURE STUDIES. 

plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall 
see those scattered mists rallying in the 
ravines, and floating up toward you, along 
the winding valleys, till they couch in quiet 
masses, iridescent with the morning light, 
upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, 
whose leagues of massy undulation will melt 
back into that robe of material light, until 
they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear 
again above, in the serene heaven, like a 
wild, bright, impossible dream, foundation- 
less and inaccessible, their very bases vanish- 
ing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue 
of the deep lake below. Wait yet a little 
longer, and you shall see those mists gather 
themselves into white towers, and stand like 
fortresses along the promontories, massy 
and motionless, only piled with every instant 
higher and higher into the sky, and casting 
longer shadows athwart the rocks ; and out 
of the pale blue of the horizon you will see 
forming and advancing a troop of narrow, 
dark, pointed vapors, which will cover the 
sky, inch by inch, with their gray network, 
and take the light off the landscape with an 
eclipse which will stop the singing of the 
birds and motion of the leaves together: 
and then you will see horizontal bars of 
black shadow forming under them, and lurid 



SKY AND CLOUD. 103 

wreaths create themselves, you know not 
how, along the shoulders of the hills; you 
never see them form, but when you look 
back to a place which was clear an instant 
ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the 
precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey. 
And then you will hear the sudden rush of 
the awakened wind, and you will see those 
watch-towers of vapor swept away from their 
foundations, and waving curtains of opaque 
rain let down to the valleys, swinging from 
the burdened clouds in black, bending 
fringes, or pacing in pale columns along the 
lake level, grazing its surface into foam as 
they go. And then, as the sun sinks you 
shall see the storm drift for an instant from 
off the hills, leaving their broad sides smok- 
ing, and loaded yet with snow-white torn, 
steamlike rags of capricious vapor, now gone, 
now gathered again; while the smouldering 
sun, seeming not far away, but burning like 
a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could 
reach it, plunges through the rushing wind 
and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it 
meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air 
about with blood. And then you shall hear 
the fainting tempest die in the hollow of 
the night, and you shall see a green halo 
kindling on the summit of the eastern hills, 



io 4 NATURE STUDIES. 

brighter — brighter yet, till the large white 
circle of the slow moon is lifted up among 
the barred clouds, step by step, line by line ; 
star after star she quenches with her kin- 
dling light, setting in their stead an army 
of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the 
heaven, to give light upon the earth, which 
move together, hand in hand, company by 
company, troop by troop, so measured in 
their unity of motion, that the whole heaven 
seems to roll with them, and the earth to 
reel under them. And then wait yet for one 
hour, until the east again becomes purple, 
and the heaving mountains, rolling against 
it in darkness, like the waves of a wild sea, 
are drowned one by one in the glory of 
its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze 
in their winding paths about the mountains, 
like mighty serpents with scales of fire; 
watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, 
kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each 
in itself a new morning: their long ava- 
lanches cast down in keen streams brighter 
than the lightning, sending his tribute of 
driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the 
heaven: the rose-light of their silent domes 
flushing that heaven about them and above 
them, piercing with purer light through its 
purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new 



SKY AND CLOUD. 105 

glory on every wreath as it passes by, until 
the whole heaven — one scarlet canopy, — is 
interwoven with a roof of waving flame, 
and tossing, vault, beyond vault, as with the 
drifted wings of many companies of angels. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. Ill, Chap. IV, 
pp. 385-388. 

Did you ever see one sunrise like another? 
does not God vary His clouds for you every 
morning and every night? though, indeed, 
there is enough in the disappearing and 
appearing of the great orb above the rolling 
of the world, to interest all of us, one would 
think, for as many times as we shall see it ; 
and yet the aspect is changed for us daily. 

— Lectures on Architecture and Painting, Lecture I, p. 220. 

Concerning stars in the east — you can't 
see the loveliest which appear there natu- 
rally, — the Morning Star, namely, and his 
fellows, — unless you get up in the morning. 

If you resolve thus always, so far as may 
be in your own power, to see the loveliest 
which are there naturally you will soon come 
to see them in a supernatural manner, with 
a quite — properly so-called — "miraculous " 
or " wonderful " light which will be a light in 
your spirit, not in your eyes. And you will 



106 NATURE STUDIES. 

hear, with your spirit, the Morning Star and 
his fellows sing together ; also, you will hear 
the sons of God shouting together for joy 
with them; particularly the little ones, — spar- 
rows, greenfinches, linnets, and the like. 

You will by persevering in the practice, 
gradually discover that it is a pleasant thing 
to see stars in the luminous east ; to watch 
them fade as they rise : to hear their Master 
say, " Let there be light, — and there is 
light": to see the world made that day at 

the Word : —Fors Clavigera, Vol. Ill, Letter LX, p. 79. 

Last night the sky was all a spangle and 
delicate glitter of stars, the glare of them 
and spikiness softened off by a young 
darling of a Moon. — Hortus indusus,^. 51. 

Very wet all morning: the clouds drifting 
like smoke from the hills, and hanging in 
wreaths about the white churches on their 
woody slopes. Kept in till three, then the 
clouds broke. . . . The clouds were rising 
gradually from the Apennines, fragments 
entangled here and there in the ravines 
catching the level sunlight like so many 
tongues of fire : the dark blue outline of the 
hills clear as crystal against a pale distant 
purity of green sky, the sun touching here 



SKY AND CLOUD. 107 

and there upon their turfy precipices. . . . 
A mass of higher mountains, plunging down 
into broad valleys dark with olive, their sum- 
mits at first gray with rain, then deep blue 
with flying showers — the sun suddenly catch- 
ing the near woods at their base, already 
colored exquisitely by the autumn, with 
such a burst of robing, — penetrating, glow 
as Turner only could even imagine, set off 
by the gray storm behind. 

To the south, an expanse of sea, varied by 
reflection of white Alpine cloud, and delicate 
lines of most pure blue, the low sun sending 
its line of light — forty miles long — from the 
horizon ; . . . This continued till near sun- 
set, when a tall double rainbow rose to the 
east over the fiery woods, and as the sun 
sank, the storm of falling rain on the moun- 
tains became suddenly purple — nearly crim- 
son ; the rainbow, its hues scarcely traceable, 
one broad belt of crimson, the clouds above 

all fire. — Praterita, Vol. II, Chap. Ill, pp. 227,228. 

The first and most important character 
of clouds, is dependent on the different 
altitudes at which they are formed. The 
atmosphere may be conveniently considered 
as divided into three spaces, each inhabited 
by clouds of specific character altogether 



108 NATURE STUDIES. 

different, though, in reality, there is no dis- 
tinct limit fixed between them by Nature, 
clouds being formed at every altitude, and 
partaking according to their altitude, more 
or less of the characters of the upper or 
lower regions. The scenery of the sky is 
thus formed of an infinitely graduated series 
of systematic forms of cloud, each of which 
has its own region in which alone it is 
formed, and each of which has specific char- 
acters which can only be properly deter- 
mined by comparing them as they are 
found clearly distinguished by intervals of 
considerable space. I shall therefore con- 
sider the sky as divided into three regions 
— the upper region, or region of the cirrus : 
the central region, or region of the stratus : 
the lower region, or the region of the rain- 
cloud. 

The clouds which I wish to consider in 
the upper region, never touch even the 
highest mountains of Europe . . . they are 
the motionless multitudinous lines of deli- 
cate vapor with which the blue of the open 
sky is commonly streaked or speckled after 
several days of fine weather. . . . Their chief 
characters are — first, Symmetry: They 
are nearly always arranged in some definite 
and evident order, commonly in long ranks 



SKY AND CLOUD. 109 

reaching sometimes from the zenith to the 
horizon, each rank composed of an infinite 
number of transverse bars of about the 
same length, each bar thickest in the mid- 
dle, and terminating in a traceless vapor- 
ous point at each side; the ranks are in 
the direction of the wind, and the bars of 
course at right angles to it; these latter 
are commonly slightly bent in the middle. 
. . . Another frequent arrangement is in 
groups of excessively fine, silky, parallel 
fibres commonly radiating, or having a ten- 
dency to radiate, from one of their extremi- 
ties and terminating in a plumy sweep at 
the other: — these are vulgarly known as 
"mares' tails." . . . They differ from all 
other clouds in having a plan and system ; 
whereas other clouds, though there are cer- 
tain laws which they cannot break, have 
yet perfect freedom from anything like a 
relative and general system of government. 
The upper clouds are to the lower, what sol- 
diers on parade are to a mixed multitude. 

Secondly, Sharpness of Edge: — The edges 
of the bars of the upper clouds, which are 
turned to the wind, are often the sharpest 
which the sky shows; . . . The outline of 
a black thunder-cloud is striking, from the 
great energy of the color or shade of the 



no NATURE STUDIES. 

general mass; but as a line, it is soft and 
indistinct, compared with the edge of the 
cirrus, in a clear sky with a brisk breeze. . . . 

Thirdly, Multitude: — The delicacy of 
these vapors is sometimes carried into such 
an infinity of division, that no other sensa- 
tion of number that the earth or heaven can 
give is so impressive. . . . 

Fourthly, Purity of Color . . . their colors 
are more pure and vivid, and their white 
less sullied than those of any other clouds. 

Lastly, Variety: — Variety is never so 
conspicuous as when it is united with sym- 
metry. The perpetual change of form in 
other clouds, is monotonous in its very dis- 
similarity, nor is difference striking where no 
connection is implied ; but if through a range 
of barred clouds, crossing half the heaven, all 
governed by the same forces, and falling into 
one general form, there be yet a marked and 
evident dissimilarity between each member 
of the great mass — one more finely drawn, 
the next more delicately moulded, the next 
more gracefully bent, — each broken into 
differently modelled and variously numbered 
groups, the variety is doubly striking, be- 
cause contrasted with the perfect symmetry of 
which it forms a part. . . . Such are the great 
attributes of the upper cloud region. . . . 



SKY AND CLOUD. in 

The colors of these clouds are so marvel- 
lous in their changefulness, that they require 
particular notice. If you watch for the 
next sunset, when there are a considerable 
number of these cirri in the sky, you will see, 
especially at the zenith, that the sky does 
not remain of the same color for two inches 
together ; one cloud has a dark side of cold 
blue, and a fringe of milky white; another, 
above it, has a dark side of purple and an 
tdge of red ; another, nearer the sun, has an 
under-side of orange and an edge of gold; 
these you will find mingled with, and passing 
into the blue of the sky, which in places you 
will not be able to distinguish from the cool 
gray of the darker clouds, and which will be 
itself full of gradation, now pure and deep, 
now faint and feeble; and all this is done, 
not in large pieces, nor on a large scale, but 
over and over again in every square yard, so 
that there is no single part nor portion of 
the whole sky which has not in itself variety 
of color enough for a separate picture, and 
yet no single part which is like another, 
or which has not some peculiar source of 
beauty, and some peculiar arrangement of 
color of its own. 

— Modern Painters.Vol. I, Part II, Sect. Ill, Chap. II, pp. 329-338. 



ii2 NATURE STUDIES. 

An entirely glorious sunset . . . deep scar- 
let and purest rose, on purple gray, in bars ; 
and stationary, plumy, sweeping filaments 
above in upper-sky — remaining in glory, 
every moment best, changing from one 
good into another (but only in color or 
light — form steady), for half an hour full, 
and the clouds afterwards fading into the 
gray against amber twilight, stationary in 
the same form for about two hours, at least. 
The darkening rose-tint remained till half- 
past ten ; the grand time being at nine. 
The day had been fine, exquisite green 
light on afternoon hills. 

— The Storm- Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, Lecture I, p. 388. 

Our boat shoots swiftly from beneath 
the last bridge of Venice, and brings us 
out into the open sea and sky. The pure 
cumuli of cloud lie crowded and leaning 
against one another, rank beyond rank, far 
over the shining water, each cut away at 
its foundation by a level line, trenchant and 
clear, till they sink to the horizon like a 
flight of marble steps, except where the 
mountains meet them, and are lost in 
them, barred across by the grey terraces of 
those cloud foundations, and reduced into 
one crestless bank of blue, spotted here 



SKY AND CLOUD. 113 

and there with strange flakes of wan, aerial, 
greenish light, strewed upon them like snow. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. Ill, p. 33. 

Are not all natural things, it may be 
asked, as lovely near as far away ? Nay, 
not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the 
delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides, 
and the rounded lustre of their magnifi- 
cent rolling. They are meant to be be- 
held far away ; they were shaped for their 
place, high above your head ; approach 
them, and they fuse into vague mists, or 
whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous 

Vapor. — The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXI, p. 244. 

Never if you can help it, miss seeing 
the sunset and the dawn. 

— The Laws of Fesole, Chap. I, p. 20. 

The cloud, or firmament, as we have seen, 
signifies the ministration of the heavens to 
man. That ministration may be in judg- 
ment or mercy — in the lightning, or the 
dew. But the bow, or color, of the cloud, 
signifies always mercy, the sparing of life : 
such ministry of the heaven, as shall feed 
and prolong life. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. XI, p. 404. 



ii 4 NATURE STUDIES. 

The day had been fine, with scattered 
clouds ; in the evening a most curious case 
of floating cap clouds hooding the Mont 
Blanc summit without touching it, like gos- 
samer blown upward from a field; an awning 
of slender threads waving like weeds in the 
blue sky (as weeds in a brook current I 
meant), and drawn out like floss silk as fine 

as SnOW. — Prceterita, Vol. II, Chap. XI, p. 370. 

Of one thing I am well assured, that so far 
as the clouds are regarded, not as conceal- 
ing the truth of other things, but as them- 
selves true and separate creations, they are 
not usually beheld by us with enough honor ; 
we have too great veneration for cloudless- 

neSS. — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. V, p. 1 1 1. 

Note that there is this great peculiarity 
about sky subject, as distinguished from 
earth subject: — that the clouds, not being 
much liable to man's interference are always 
beautifully arranged . . . the clouds, though 
we can hide them with smoke, and mix them 
with poison, cannot be quarried nor built 
over, and they are always therefore gloriously 
arranged, so gloriously, that unless you have 
notable powers of memory you need not 
hope to approach the effect of any sky that 



SKY AND CLOUD. 115 

interests you. For both its grace and its 
glow depend upon the united influence of 
every cloud within its compass ; they all 
move and burn together in a marvellous 
harmony ; not a cloud of them is out of its 
appointed place, or fails of its part in the 
choir ; . . . Clouds are definite and very 
beautiful forms of sculptured mist: sculp- 
tured is a perfectly accurate word : they are 
not more drifted into form than they are 
carved into form, the warm air around them 
cutting them into shape by absorbing the 
visible vapor beyond certain limits, hence 
their angular and fantastic outlines, as dif- 
ferent from a swollen, spherical, or globular 
formation, on the one hand, as from that of 
flat films or shapeless mists on the other. 

— The Elements of Drawings Letter II, pp. 327, 329. 

In fine weather the sky was either blue or 
clear in its light; the clouds either white 
or golden, adding to, not abating, the lustre 
of the sky. In wet weather, there were two 
different species of clouds, — those of benefi- 
cent rain, which for distinction's sake I will 
call the non-electric rain-cloud, and those of 
storm, usually charged highly with electricity. 
The beneficent rain-cloud was indeed often 
extremely dull and gray for days together, 



n6 NATURE STUDIES. 

but gracious nevertheless, felt to be doing 
good, and often to be delightful after drought; 
capable also of the most exquisite coloring, 
under certain conditions; and continually 
traversed in clearing by the rainbow: — and, 
secondly, the storm-cloud, always majestic, 
often dazzlingly beautiful, and felt also to be 
beneficent in its own way, affecting the mass 
of the air with vital agitation, and purging it 
from the impurity of all mobific elements. 

In the entire system of the firmament, 
thus seen and understood, there appeared 
. . . the incontrovertible and unmistakable 
evidence of a Divine Power in creation, which 
had fitted, as the air for human breath, so 
the clouds for human sight and nourishment: 

— the Father who was in heaven feeding day 
by day the souls of His children with mar- 
vels, and satisfying them with bread, and so 
filling their hearts with food and gladness. 

— The Storm- Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, Lecture I, p. 366. 

The discovery by modern science that all 
mortal strength is from the Sun while it has 
thrown foolish persons into atheism, is, to 
wise ones, the most precious testimony to 
their faith yet given by physical Nature ; for 
it gives us the arithmetical and measurable 
assurance that men vitally active are living 



SKY AND CLOUD. 117 

sunshine, having the roots of their souls set 
in sunlight, as the roots of a tree are in the 
earth ; not that the dust is therefore the God 
of the tree, but the Tree is the animation of 
the dust, and the living soul of the sunshine. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. Ill, Letter LXIII, p. 148. 

You cannot love the real Sun, that is to 
say physical light and color, rightly, unless 
you love the spiritual Sun, that is to say 
justice and truth, rightly. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. Ill, Letter LXVI, p. 215. 

All lovely clouds, remember, are quiet 
clouds, — not merely quiet in appearance 
because of their greater height and distance, 
but quiet actually, fixed for hours, it may be, 
in the same form and place. I have seen a 
fair-weather cloud high over Coniston Old 
Man, — not on the hill, observe, but a vertical 
mile above it, — stand motionless, — change- 
less, — for twelve hours together. From four 
o'clock in the afternoon of one day I watched 
it through the night by the north twilight, 
till the dawn struck it with full crimson, at 
four of the following July morning. 

What is glorious and good in the heavenly 
cloud, you can, if you will, bring also into 
your lives, — which are indeed like it, in 



n8 NATURE STUDIES. 

their vanishing, but how much more in their 
not vanishing, till the morning take them to 
itself. As this ghastly phantasy of death is 
to the mighty clouds of which it is written, 
" The Chariots of God are twenty thousand, 
even thousands of angels," are the fates to 
which your passions may condemn you, — 
or your resolution raise. You may drift 
with the phrenzy of the whirlwind, — or be 
fastened for your part in the pacified efful- 
gence of the sky. 

— The Art of England, Lecture VI, p. 356. 

There is no effect of sky possible in the 
lowlands which may not in equal perfec- 
tion be seen among the hills; but there 
are effects by tens of thousands, forever 
invisible and inconceivable to the inhabit- 
ant of the plains, manifested among the 
hills in the course of one day. The mere 
power of familiarity with the clouds, of 
walking with them, and above them, alters 
and renders clear our whole conception of 
the baseless architecture of the sky; and 
for the beauty of it, there is more in a 
single wreath of early cloud, pacing its way 
up an avenue of pines, or pausing among 
the points of their fringes, than in all the 
white heaps that fill the arched sky of the 



SKY AND CLOUD. 119 

plains from one horizon to the other. And 
of the nobler cloud manifestations, — the 
breaking of their troublous seas against the 
crags, their black spray sparkling with light- 
ning; or the going forth of the morning 
along their pavements of moving marble, 
level-laid between dome and dome of 
snow; — of these things there can be as lit- 
tle imagination or understanding in an in- 
habitant of the plains as of the scenery of 
another planet than his own. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part IV, Chap. XX, p. 432. 

The moss-lands have one great advan- 
tage over the forest-lands, namely, sight of 
the sky. And not only sight of it, but 
continual and beneficent help from it. 
What they have to separate them from 
barren rock, namely, their moss and 
streams, being dependent on its direct 
help, not on great rivers coming from dis- 
tant mountain chains, nor on vast tracks 
of ocean-mist coming up at evening, but 
on the continued play and change of sun 
and cloud. . . . 

... It would be strange, indeed, if there 
were no beauty in the phenomena by which 
this great renovating and purifying work 
is done. And it is done almost entirely 



120 NATURE STUDIES. 

by the great Angel of the Sea — rain: the 
Angel, observe, the messenger sent to a 
special place on a special errand. Not the 
diffused perpetual presence of the burden 
of mist, but the going and returning of 
intermittent cloud. All turns upon this 
intermittence. Soft moss on stone and 
rock; — cave-fern of tangled glen; wayside 
well — perennial, patient, silent, clear ; steal- 
ing through its square font of rough-hewn 
stone : ever thus deep — no more — which 
the winter wreck sullies not, the summer 
thirst wastes not, incapable of stain as of 
decline — where the fallen leaf floats unde- 
cayed, and the insect darts undenting. 
Cressed brook and ever-eddying river, 
lifted even in flood scarcely over its step- 
ping stones, — but through all sweet sum- 
mer keeping tremulous music with harp- 
strings of dark water among the silver 
fingering of the pebbles. Far away in the 
south the strong river gods have all hasted, 
and gone down to the sea. Wasted and 
burning, white furnaces of blasting sand, 
their broad beds lie ghastly and bare ; but 
here the soft wings of the Sea Angel droop 
still with dew, and the shadows of their 
plumes falter on the hills : strange laugh- 
ings, and glitterings of silver streamlets, 



SKY AND CLOUD. 121 

born suddenly, and twined about the mossy 
heights in trickling tinsel, answering to 
them as they wave. 

Nor are those wings colorless. We hab- 
itually think of the rain-cloud only as dark 
and gray: not knowing that we owe to it 
perhaps the fairest, though not the most 
dazzling of the hues of heaven. Often in 
our English mornings, the rain-clouds in 
the dawn form soft level fields, which melt 
imperceptibly into the blue : or when of 
less extent, gather into apparent bars, cross- 
ing the sheets of broader cloud above ; and 
all these bathed throughout in an unspeak- 
able light of pure rose-color, and purple, 
and amber, and blue ; not shining, but 
misty-soft: the barred masses, when seen 
nearer composed of clusters or tresses of 
cloud, like floss silk; looking as if each 
knot were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted 
rain. No clouds form such skies, none are 
so tender, various, inimitable. 

For these are the robes of love of the 
Angel of the Sea. To these that name is 
chiefly given, the " spreading of the clouds," 
from their extent, their gentleness, their 
fulness of rain. Note how they are spoken 
of in Job xxxvi. v. 29-31. " By them judge th 
he the people: he giveth meat in abun- 



122 NATURE STUDIES. 

dance. With clouds he covereth the light. 
He hath hidden the light in his hands, 
and commanded that it should not return. 
He speaks of it to his friend ; that it is his 
possession, and that he may ascend thereto. 

That, then, is the Sea Angel's message 
to God's friends : that, the meaning of 
those strange golden lights and purple 
flushes before the morning rain. The rain 
is sent to judge, and feed us ; but the light 
is the possession of the friends of God, 
and they may ascend thereto, — where the 
tabernacle veil will cross and part its rays 
no more. 

But the Angel of the Sea has also an- 
other message, — in the " great rain of his 
strength," rain of trial, sweeping away ill- 
set foundations. Then his robe is not 
spread softly over the whole heaven, as a 
veil, but sweeps back 'from his shoulders, 
ponderous, oblique, terrible — leaving his 
sword-arm free. 

The approach of trial-storm, hurricane- 
storm, is indeed in its vastness as the 
clouds of the softer rain. But it is not 
slow nor horizontal, but swift and steep: 
swift with passion of ravenous winds, steep 
as slope of some dark, hollowed hill. The 
fronting clouds come leaning forward, one 



SKY AND CLOUD. 123 

thrusting the other aside, or on ; impatient, 
ponderous, impendent, like globes of rock, 
tossed of Titans — Ossa on Olympus — but 
hurled forward all, in one wave of cloud- 
lava-cloud whose throat is as a sepulchre. 
Fierce behind them rages the oblique 
wrath of the rain, white as ashes, dense as 
showers of driven steel : the pillars of it full 
of ghastly life: Rain- Furies, shrieking as 
they fly: — scourging, as with whips of scor- 
pions : — the earth ringing and trembling 
under them, heaven wailing wildly, the 
trees stooped blindly down, covering their 
faces, quivering in every leaf with horror, 
ruins of their branches flying by them like 
black stubble. . . . 

. . . Nevertheless," the rain-cloud was, on 
the whole, looked upon by the Greeks as 
beneficent, so that it is boasted of in the 
CEdipus Coloneus for its perpetual feed- 
ing of the springs of Cephisus, and else- 
where often : and the opening song of the 
rain-cloud in Aristophanes is entirely beau- 
tiful. . . . 

. . . These heavens, then, "declare the 
glory of God " that is, the light of God, the 
eternal glory, stable and changeless. . . . 

" And the firmament showeth His handi- 
work? 



I2 4 NATURE STUDIES. 

The clouds, prepared by the hand of God 
for the help of man, varied in their minis- 
tration — veiling the inner splendor — show, 
not His eternal glory, but His daily handi- 
work. ..." Remember that thou magnify 
His work which men behold." 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VII, Chap. IV, pp. 180-197. 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 



Rise up actively on the earth; learn what there is in 
it, know its color and form, and the full measure and 
make of it. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. Ill, p. 60. 



IV. 

ABOUT THE EARTH. 

God has lent us the Earth for our life; it 
is a great entail. 

— Seven Lamps of Architecture , Chap. VI, p. 176. 

I hope the children of this generation may 
know more than their fathers, and that the 
study of the Earth, which hitherto has shown 
them little more than the monsters of a 
chaotic past, may at last interpret for them 
the beautiful work of the creative present, 
and lead them day by day to find a loveliness, 
till then unthought' of, in the rock, and a 
value, till then uncounted, in the gem. 

— In Montibus Sanctis^ Chap. I, p. 122. 

There are, broadly, three great dem- 
onstrable periods of the Earth's history. 
That in which it was crystallized; that in 
which it was sculptured ; and that in which 
it is now being unsculptured, or deformed. 
These three periods interlace with each 
other, and gradate into each other, — as the 
periods of human life do. Something dies 
in the child on the day that it is born, — 
127 



128 NATURE STUDIES, 

something is born in the man on the day 
that he dies ; nevertheless, his life is broadly 
divided into youth, strength, and decrepitude. 
In such clear sense, the Earth has its three 
ages ; of their length we know as yet nothing, 
except that it has been greater than any man 

had imagined. —Deucalion, Vol. I, Chap. I, p. 22. 

The fruit of Earth, and its waters, and its 
light — such as the strength of the pure rock 
can grow — such as the unthwarted sun in 
his season brings — these are your inherit- 
ance. — Fors Clavigcra, Vol. I, Letter XVI, p. 219. 

" And God said, Let the waters which are 
under the heavens be gathered together unto 
one place, and let the dry land appear." 

We do not, perhaps, often enough con- 
sider the deep significance of this sentence. 
We are too apt to receive it as the descrip- 
tion of an event vaster only in its extent, not 
in its nature, than the compelling the Red 
Sea to draw back, that Israel might pass by. 
We imagine the Deity in like manner rolling 
the waves of the greater ocean together on 
a heap, and setting bars and doors to them 
eternally. But there is a far deeper mean- 
ing than this in the solemn words of Genesis, 
and in the correspondent verse of the Psalm, 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 129 

" His hands prepared the dry land." Up to 
that moment the earth had been void, for it 
had been without form. The command that 
the waters should be gathered was the com- 
mand that the earth should be sculp tiered. 
The sea was not driven to his place in sud- 
denly restrained rebellion, but withdrawn to 
his place in perfect and patient obedience. 
The dry land appeared, not in level sands, 
forsaken by the surges, which those surges 
might again claim for their own: but in 
range beyond range of swelling hill and iron 
rock, forever to claim kindred with the firma- 
ment, and be companioned by the clouds of 
heaven. 

What space of time was in reality occupied 
by the " day " of Genesis, is not at present, 
of any importance for us to consider. By 
what furnaces of fire the adamant was melted, 
and by what wheels of earthquake it was 
torn, and by what teeth of glacier and weight 
of sea-waves it was engraven and finished 
into its perfect form, we may perhaps en- 
deavor to conjecture: but here, as in few 
words the work is summed by the historian, 
so in few broad thoughts it should be com- 
prehended by us ; and as we read the mighty 
sentence, " Let the dry land appear," we 
should try to follow the finger of God, as 



130 NATURE STUDIES. 

it engraved upon the stone tables of the 
earth the letters and the law of its ever- 
lasting form: as, gulf by gulf, the channels 
of the deep were ploughed; and, cape by 
cape, the lines were traced, with Divine fore- 
knowledge of the shores that were to limit 
the nations; and, chain by chain, the moun- 
tain walls were lengthened forth, and their 
foundations fastened forever; and the com- 
pass was set upon the face of the depth, and 
the fields, and the highest part of the dust 
of the world were made ; and the right hand 
of Christ first strewed the snow on Lebanon, 
and smoothed the slopes of Calvary. 

It is not, I repeat, always needful, in 
many respects it is not possible, to con- 
jecture the manner, or the time, in which 
this work was done ; but it is deeply neces- 
sary for all men to consider the magnifi- 
cence of the accomplished purpose, and 
the depth of the wisdom and love which 
are manifested in the ordinances of the 
hills. For observe, in order to bring the 
world into the form which it now bears, it 
was not mere sculpture that was needed; 
the mountains could not stand for a day 
unless they were formed by materials alto- 
gether different from those which consti- 
tute the lower hills and the surfaces of the 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 131 

valleys. A harder substance had to be 
prepared for every mountain chain ; yet 
not so hard but that it might be capable 
of crumbling down into earth fit to nour- 
ish the alpine forest and the alpine flower; 
not so hard but that, in the midst of the 
utmost majesty of its enthroned strength, 
there should be seen on it the seal of 
death, and the writing of the same sen- 
tence that had gone forth against the hu- 
man frame, " Dust thou art, and unto dust 
thou shalt return." And with this perish- 
able substance the most majestic forms 
were to be framed that were consistent 
with the safety of man; and the peak was 
to be lifted, and the cliff rent, as high and 
as steeply as was possible, in order to per- 
mit the shepherd to feed his flocks upon 
the slope, and the cottage to nestle be- 
neath their shadow. 

And observe, two distinct ends were to 
be accomplished in the doing this. It was, 
indeed, absolutely necessary that such emi- 
nences should be created, in order to fit the 
earth in anywise for human habitation ; for 
without mountains the air could not be puri- 
fied, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained, 
and the earth must have become for the 
most part desert plain, or stagnant marsh. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. VII, pp. 122-124. 



i 3 2 NATURE STUDIES. 

What infinite wonderfulness there is in 
vegetation, considered, as indeed it is, as the 
means by which the earth becomes the com- 
panion of man — his friend and his teacher! 
In the conditions which we have traced in 
its rocks, there could only be seen prepara- 
tion for his existence; — the characters which 
enable him to live on it safely, and to work 
with it easily — in all these it has been in- 
animate and passive; but vegetation is to 
it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the 
soul of man. The earth in its depths must 
remain dead and cold, incapable except of 
slow crystalline change; but at its surface, 
which human beings look upon and deal 
with, it ministers to them through a veil of 
strange intermediate being : which breathes, 
but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its 
appointed place ; passes through life without 
consciousness, to death without bitterness; 
wears the beauty of youth, without its pas- 
sion; and declines to the weakness of age, 
without its regret. 

And in this mystery of intermediate being, 
entirely subordinate to us, with which we 
can deal as we choose, having just the 
greater power as we have the less respon- 
sibility for our treatment of the unsuffering 
creature, most of the pleasures which we 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 133 

need from the external world are gathered, 
and most of the lessons we need are written, 
all kinds of precious grace and teaching 
being united in this link between the Earth 
and Man ; wonderful in universal adaptation 
to his need, desire and discipline; God's 
daily preparation of the earth for him, with 
beautiful means of life. First a carpet to 
make it soft for him ; then, a colored fantasy 
of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading 
foliage to shade him from sunheat, and shade 
also the fallen rain, that it may not dry 
quickly back into the clouds, but stay to 
nourish the springs among the moss. Stout 
wood to bear this leafage; easily to be cut, 
yet tough and light, to make houses for him, 
or instruments (lance-shaft, or plough-handle, 
according to his temper) ; useless it had been, 
if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if 
less elastic. Winter comes, and the shade 
of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the 
earth ; the strong boughs remain, breaking 
the strength of winter winds. The seeds 
which are to prolong the race, innumerable 
according to the need, are made beautiful 
and palatable, varied into infinitude of 
appeal to the fancy of man, or provision 
for his service; cold juice, or glowing spice, 
or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving 



i 3 4 NATURE STUDIES. 

resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge or lull- 
ing charm ; and all these presented in forms 
of endless change. Fragility or force, soft- 
ness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; 
unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, 
or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils 
on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid 
arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wav- 
ings to and fro with faintest pulse of sum- 
mer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength 
of rock, or binding the transience of the 
sand; crests basking in sunshine of the des- 
ert, or hiding by dripping spring and light- 
less cave; foliage far tossing in entangled 
fields beneath every wave of ocean — cloth- 
ing with variegated, everlasting films, the 
peaks of the trackless mountains or minister- 
ing at cottage doors to every gentlest pas- 
sion and simplest joy of humanity. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. I, pp. 22-24. 

By truth of earth, we mean the faithful 
representation of the facts and forms of the 
bare ground, considered as entirely divested 
of vegetation, through whatever disguise, or 
under whatever modification the clothing 
of the landscape may occasion. . . . 

. . . The laws of the organization of the 
Earth are distinct and fixed as those of the 
animal frame, simpler and broader, but 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 135 

equally authoritative and inviolable. . . . 
They are in the landscape the foundation 
of all other truths — the most necessary, 
therefore, even if they were not in them- 
selves attractive; but they are as beautiful 
as they are essential. . . . 

We find, according to this its internal 
structure . . . that the Earth may be con- 
sidered as divided into three great classes 
of formation, which geology has already 
named for us. Primary — the rocks, which, 
though in position lower than all others, 
rise to form the central peaks, or interior 
nuclei of all mountain ranges. Secondary 
— the rocks, which are laid in beds above 
these, and which form the greater propor- 
tion of all hill scenery. Tertiary — the 
light beds of sand, gravel, and clay, which 
are strewed upon the surface of all, form- 
ing plains and habitable territory for man. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. I, pp. 25-30. 

Mountains are, to the rest of the body 
of the earth, what violent muscular action 
is to the body of man. The muscles and 
tendons of its anatomy are in the moun- 
tain, brought out with fierce and convul- 
sive energy, full of expression, passion and 
strength; the plains and the lower hills 



136 NATURE STUDIES. 

are the repose and the effortless motion 
of the frame, when its muscles lie dormant 
and concealed beneath the lines of its 
beauty, yet ruling those lines in their every 
undulation. This, then, is the first grand 
principle of the truth of the earth. 

The spirit of the hills is action, that of 
the lowlands, repose ; and between them 
there is to be found every variety of mo- 
tion and of rest: from the inactive plain, 
sleeping like the firmament, with cities for 
stars, to the fiery peaks, which, with heav- 
ing bosoms and exulting limbs, with the 
clouds drifting like hair from their bright 
foreheads, lift up their Titan hands to 
Heaven, saying, "I live forever!" 

But there is this difference between the 
action of the earth, and that of a living 
creature, that while the exerted limbs mark 
its bones and tendons through the flesh, 
the excited earth casts off the flesh alto- 
gether, and its bones come out from be- 
neath. Mountains are the bones of the 
earth, their highest peaks are invariably 
those parts of its anatomy which in the 
plains lie buried under five and twenty 
thousand feet of solid thickness of super- 
incumbent soil, and which spring up in the 
mountain ranges in vast pyramids or wedges, 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 137 

flinging their garment of earth away from 
them on each side. The masses of the 
lower hills are laid over and against their 
sides, like the masses of lateral masonry 
against the skeleton arch of an unfinished 
bridge, except that they slope up to and 
lean against the central ridge; and finally, 
upon the slopes of these lower hills are 
strewed the level beds of sprinkled gravel, 
sand, and clay, which form the extent of 
the champaign. Here then is another 
grand principle of the truth of earth, that 
the mountains must come from under all, 
and be the support of all, and that every- 
thing else must be laid in their arms, heap 
above heap, the plains being the upper- 
most. Such being the structure of the 
framework of the earth, it is next to be 
remembered, that all soil whatsoever, wher- 
ever it is accumulated in greater quantity 
than is sufficient to nourish the moss of the 
wall-flower, has been so, either by the direct 
transporting agency of water, or under the 
guiding influence and power of water. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, pp. 27, 28. 

The Earth, as a tormented and trembling 
ball, may have rolled in space for myriads of 
ages before humanity was formed from its 



138 NATURE STUDIES. 

dust; and as a devastated ruin it may con- 
tinue to roll, when all that dust shall again 
have been mingled with ashes that never 
were warmed by life, or polluted by sin. 
But for us the intelligible and substantial 
fact is that the Earth has been brought, by 
forces we know not of, into a form fitted for 
our habitation ; on that form a gradual, but 
destructive, change is continually taking 
place. . . . But in the hand of the great 
Architect . . . time and decay are as much 
the instruments of His purpose as the forces 
by which He first led forth the troops of 
hills in leaping flocks: the lightning and 
the torrent and the wasting and weariness of 
innumerable ages, all bear their part in the 
working out of one consistent plan ; and the 
Builder of the temple forever stands beside 
His work, appointing the stone that is to 
fall, and the pillar that is to be abased, and 
guiding all the seeming wildness of chance 
and change, into ordained splendors and 
foreseen harmonies. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XII, pp. 183, 185. 

These are the two essential instincts of 
humanity: the love of Order, and the love 
of Kindness. By the love of order the moral 
energy is to deal with the earth, and to dress 

it and keep it. —Lectures on Art, Lecture III, p. 251. 



ABOUT THE EARTH, 139 

The fulfilment of all human liberty -is in 
the peaceful inheritance of the earth, with 
its "herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yield- 
ing fruit" after his kind; the pasture or 
arable land, and the blossoming, or wooded 
and fruited, land uniting the final elements 
of life and peace, for body and soul. . . . 
And as the work of war and sin has always 
been the devastation of this blossoming 
earth, whether by spoil or idleness, so the 
work of peace and virtue is also that of the 
first day of Paradise, to " Dress it and to 
keep it." And that will always be the song 
of perfectly accomplished Liberty, in her 
industry, and rest, and shelter from troubled 
thoughts in the calm of the fields. 

— Time and Tide, Letter XXIV, pp. 227, 228. 

Earth, — meant to be nourishing for you 

and bloSSOming. —Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter V, p. 69. 

What hinders us from covering as much 
of the world as we like with pleasant shade, 
and pure blossom, and goodly fruit? Who 
forbids its valleys to be covered over with 
corn, till they laugh and sing? Who pre- 
vents its dark forests, ghostly and uninhab- 
itable, from being changed into infinite 
orchards, wreathing the hills with frail- 



140 NATURE STUDIES. 

floretted snow, far away to the half-lighted 
horizon of April, and flushing the face of 
all the autumnal earth with glow of clustered 

food ? — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Chap. I, p. 22. 

Do you remember the questioning to 
Job ? — " Hath the rain a father — and who 
hath begotten the drops of dew, — the hoary 
frost of heaven — who hath gendered it?" 

That rain and frost of heaven; and the 
earth which they loose and bind ; these, 
and the labor of your hands to divide 
them, and subdue, are your wealth. . . . 

The fruit of Earth, and its waters, and 
its light — such as the strength of the 
pure rock can grow — such as the un- 
thwarted sun in his season brings — these 
are your inheritance. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter XVI, p. 219. 

As the first laws of line may best be 
learned in the lines of the Earth, so also the 
first laws of light may best be learned in 
the light of the Earth. Not the hawthorn 
blossom, nor the pearl, nor the grain of 
mustard or manna, — not the smallest round 
thing that lies as the hoar-frost on the 
ground — but around it, and upon it, are 
illuminated the laws that bade the Evening 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 141 

and the Morning be the first day. . . . What- 
ever the position of the Sun, and whatever 
the rate of motion of any point on the 
Earth through the minutes, hours, or days 
of twilight, the meeting of the margins of 
night and day is always constant in the 
breadth of its zone of gradually expiring 
light; and that in relation to the whole 
mass of the globe, that passage from " glow 
to gloom " is as trenchant and swift as 
between the crescent of the new moon and 
the dimness of the "Auld mune in her 

airmS." — The Laws of Fesole, Chap. X, p. 1 18. 

The simple fact that the sky is brighter 
than the Earth, is not a precious truth, un- 
less the Earth itself be first understood. 
Despise the Earth, or slander it; fix your 
eyes on its gloom and forget its loveliness; 
and we do not thank you for your languid 
or despairing perception of brightness in 

heaven. —Modern Painters^ Vol. IV, Chap. Ill, p. 60. 

I feel more strongly every day, that no 
evidence to be collected within historical 
periods can be accepted as any clue to the 
great tendencies of geological change: but 
that the great laws which never fail, and to 
which all change is subordinate, appear such 



i 4 2 NATURE STUDIES. 

as to accomplish a gradual advance to love- 
lier order, and more calmly, yet more deeply, 
animated Rest. Nor has this conviction 
ever fastened itself upon me more distinctly, 
than during my endeavor to trace the laws 
which govern the lowly framework of the 
dust. For, through all the phases of tran- 
sition and dissolution, there seems to be a 
continual effort to raise itself into a higher 
state: and a measured gain, through the 
fierce revulsion and slow renewal of the 
earth's frame, in beauty, and order, and 
permanence. The soft white sediments of 
the sea draw themselves, in process of time, 
into smooth knots of sphered symmetry; 
burdened and strained under increase of 
pressure, they pass into a nascent marble; 
scorched by fervent heat, they brighten and 
blanch into the snowy rock of Paros and 
Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river, 
or stagnant slime of inland pool and lake, 
divides, or resolves itself as it dries, into 
layers of its several elements: slowly puri- 
fying each by the patient withdrawal of it 
from the anarchy of the mass in which 
it was mingled. Contracted by increasing 
draught, till it must shatter into fragments, 
it infuses continually a finer ichor into the 
opening veins, and finds in its weakness the 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 143 

first rudiments of a perfect strength. Rent 
at last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, 
and tormented in lambent fire, it knits, 
through the fusion, the fibres of a perennial 
endurance ; and, during countless subsequent 
centuries, declining, or rather let me say, 
rising to repose, finishes the infallible lustre 
of its crystalline beauty, under harmonies of 
laws which are wholly beneficent, because 
wholly inexorable. 

— The Ethics of the Dust, Chap. X, pp. 139, 140. 

About 500 B.C. ... at that culminating 
period of the Greek religion we find, under 
one governing Lord of all things, four sub- 
ordinate elemental forces, and four spiritual 
powers living in them, and commanding 
them. The elements are of course the well- 
known four of the ancient world — the 
Earth, the waters, the fire, and the air. . . . 
They are the rulers of the Earth that we 
tread upon, and the air that we breathe. . . . 
The rule of the first spirit, Demeter, the 
Earth Mother, is over the Earth, first, as 
the origin of all life — the dust from whence 
we were taken. . . . 

Secondly, as the receiver of all things 
back at last into silence — "Dust thou art, 
and unto dust shalt thou return." 

— The Queen of the Air, Chap. I, p. 242. 



i 4 4 NATURE STUDIES. 

In the children of noble races, trained 
by surrounding art, and at the same time 
in the practice of great deeds, there is an 
intense delight in the landscape of their 
country as memorial ; a sense not taught 
to them, nor teachable to any others; but 
in them, innate; and the seal and reward 
of persistence in great national life: — the 
obedience and the peace of ages having 
extended gradually the glory of the re- 
vered ancestors also to the ancestral land ; 
until the Motherhood of the dust, the mys- 
tery of the Demeter from whose bosom we 
came, and to whose bosom we return, sur- 
rounds and inspires, everywhere, the local 
awe of field and fountain ; the sacredness 
of landmark that none may remove, and 
of men that none may pollute, while rec- 
ords of proud days, and of dear persons, 
make every rock monumental with ghostly 
inscription, and every path lovely with 

noble deSOlateneSS. — Lectures on Art, Inaugural, p. 212. 

Wherever there are high mountains, 
there are hard rocks. Earth, at its strong- 
est, has difficulty in sustaining itself above 
the clouds ; and could not hold itself in 
any noble height, if knitted infirmly. 

— Deucalion, Chap. XV, p. 153. 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 145 

The present conformation of the earth 
appears dictated by supreme wisdom and 
kindness. And yet its former state must 
have been different from what it is now; 
as its present one from that which it must 
assume hereafter. Is this, therefore, the 
earth's prime into which we are born; or 
is it, with all its beauty, only the wreck of 
Paradise ? 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XII, p. 182. 

Earth and Air: — The deep of air that 
surrounds the earth enters into union with 
the earth at its surface, and with its waters; 
so as to be the apparent cause of their as- 
cending into life. First, it warms them, and 
shades, at once, staying the heat of the sun's 
rays in its own body, but warding their force 
with its clouds. 

It warms and cools at once, with traffic of 
balm and frost; so that the white wreaths 
are withdrawn from the field of the Swiss 
peasant by the glow of Libyan rock. It 
gives its own strength to the sea ; forms and 
fills every cell of its foam ; sustains the 
precipices, and designs the valleys of its 
waves; gives the gleam to their moving 
under the night, and the white fire to their 
plains under sunrise ; lifts their voices along 



146 NATURE STUDIES. 

the rocks, bears above them the spray of 
birds, pencils through them the dimpling of 
unfooted sands. It gathers out of them a 
portion in the hollow of its hand ; dyes, with 
that, the hills into dark blue, and their gla- 
ciers with dying rose : inlays with that, for 
sapphire, the dome in which it has to set 
the cloud; shapes out of that the heavenly 
flocks: divides them, numbers, cherishes, 
bears them on its bosom, calls them to their 
journeys, waits by their rest; feeds them 
from the brooks that cease not, and strews 
with them the dews that cease. It spins 
and weaves their fleece into wild tapestry, 
rends it, and renews; and flits and flames, 
and whispers, among the golden threads, 
thrilling them with a plectrum of strange 
fire that traverses them to and fro, and is 
enclosed in them like life. 

It enters into the surface of the earth, sub- 
dues it, and falls together with it into fruitful 
dust, from which can be moulded flesh: 
it joins itself, in dew, to the substance of 
adamant; and becomes the green leaf out 
of the dry ground ; it enters into the sepa- 
rated shapes of the earth it has tempered, 
commands the ebb and flow of the current 
of their life, fills their limbs with its own 
lightness, measures their existence by its in- 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 147 

dwelling pulse, moulds upon their lips the 
words by which one soul can be known to 
another ; is to them the hearing of the ear, 
and the beating of the heart; and, passing 
away, leaves them to the peace that hears 
and moves no more. 

— The Queen of the Air % Essay II, pp. 305, 306. 

You all probably know that the ochreous 
stain, which, perhaps, is often thought to 
spoil the basin of your spring, is iron in a 
state of rust. ... It is not a fault in the iron, 
but a virtue, to be so fond of getting rusted, 
for in that condition it fulfils its most im- 
portant functions in the universe, and most 
kindly duties to mankind. Nay, in a cer- 
tain sense, and almost a literal one, we may 
say that iron rusted is Living; but when 
pure or polished, Dead. 

You all probably know that in the mixed 
air we breathe, the part of it essentially 
needful to us is called oxygen ; and that this 
substance is to all animals, in the most ac- 
curate sense of the word, " breath of life." 
Now it is this very same air which the iron 
breathes when it gets rusty. It takes the 
oxygen from the atmosphere as eagerly as 
we do, though it uses it differently. The 
iron keeps all that it gets; we, and other 



148 NATURE STUDIES. 

animals, part with it again; but the metal 
absolutely keeps what it has once received 
of this aerial gift; and the ochreous dust 
which we so much despise is, in fact, just so 
much nobler than pure iron, in so far as it 
is iron and the air. Nobler, and more use- 
ful — for indeed, the main service of this 
metal, and of all other metals, to us, is . . . 
in making the ground we feed from, and 
nearly all the substances first needful to our 
existence. For these are all nothing but 
metals and oxygen — metals with breath put 
into them. 

Sand, lime, clay, and the rest of the 
earths — potash and soda, and the rest of 
the alkalies — are all of them metals which 
have undergone this, so to speak, vital 
change, and have been rendered fit for the 
service of man by permanent unity with the 
purest air which he himself breathes. . . . 

. . . You think, perhaps, that your iron 
is wonderfully useful in a pure form, but 
how would you like the world, if all your 
meadows, instead of grass, grew nothing 
but iron wire — if all your arable ground, 
instead of being made of sand and clay, 
were suddenly turned into flat surfaces of 
steel — if the whole earth, instead of its 
green and glowing sphere, rich with forest 



ABOUT THE EARTH, 149 

and flower, showed nothing, but the image 
of the vast furnace of a ghastly engine — a 
globe of black, lifeless, excoriated metal ? 
It would be that, — probably it was once 
that ; but assuredly it would be, were it not 
that all the substance of which it is made 
sucks and breathes the brilliancy of the at- 
mosphere ; and as it breathes, softening from 
its merciless hardness, it falls into fruitful 
and beneficent dust ; gathering itself again 
into the earths from which we feed, and the 
stones from which we build ; — into the rocks 
that frame the mountains, and the sands 
that bind the sea. 

Hence it is impossible for you to take up 
the most insignificant pebble at your feet, 
without being able to read, if you like, this 
curious lesson in it. You look upon it at first 
as if it were earth only, " Nay " it answers, 
" I am not earth — I am earth and air in one ; 
part of that blue heaven which you love, and 
long for, is already in me ; it is all my life — 
without it I should be nothing, and able for 
nothing: I could not minister to you, nor 
nourish you — I should be a cruel and help- 
less thing; but, because there is, according 
to my need and place in creation, a kind of 
soul in me, I have become capable of good, 
and helpful in the circles of vitality." 



i S o NATURE STUDIES. 

Thus far the same interest attaches to all 
the earths, and all the metals of which they 
are made ; but a deeper interest, and larger 
beneficence belong to that ochreous earth 
of iron which stains the marble of your 
springs. It stains much besides that marble. 
It stains the great earth wheresoever you 
can see it, far and wide — it is the coloring 
substance appointed to color the globe for 
the sight, as well as subdue it to the service 
of man. 

You have just seen your hills covered with 
snow, and, perhaps, have enjoyed, at first, 
the contrast of their fair white with the dark 
blocks of pine woods; but have you ever 
considered how you would like them always 
white — not pure white, but dirty white — 
the white of thaw with all the chill of snow 
in it, but none of its brightness? That is 
what the color of the earth would be without 
its iron ; that would be its color, not here or 
there only, but in all places, and at all times. 
Follow out that idea till you get it in some 
detail. Think first of your pretty gravel 
walks in your gardens, yellow and fine, like 
plots of sunshine between the flower-beds; 
fancy them all suddenly turned to the color 
of ashes. That is what they would be with- 
out iron ochre. Think of your winding 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 151 

walks over the common, as warm to the eye 
as they are dry to the foot, and imagine them 
all laid down suddenly with gray cinders. 
Then pass beyond the common into the 
country, and pause at the first ploughed 
field that you see sweeping up the hill sides 
in the sun, with its deep brown furrows, and 
wealth of ridges, all a-glow, heaved aside by 
the ploughshare, like deep folds of a mantle of 
russet velvet — fancy it all changed suddenly 
into grisly furrows in a field of mud. That 
is what it would be without iron. Pass on, 
in fancy, over hill and dale, till you reach 
the bending line of the sea shore ; go down 
upon its breezy beach — watch the white 
foam flashing among the amber of it, and all 
the blue sea embayed in belts of gold ; then 
fancy those circlets of far sweeping shore 
suddenly put into mounds of mourning — 
all those golden sands turned into gray slime, 
the fairies no more able to call to each other, 
" Come unto these yellow sands," but " Come 
into these drab sands." That is what they 
would be, without iron. . . . Thus far we 
have only been considering the use and 
pleasantness of iron in the common earth 
of clay. But there are three kinds of earth 
which in mixed mass and prevalent quantity, 
form the world. Those are in common Ian- 



t$t NATURE STUDIES. 

guage, the earths of clay, of lime, and of flint. 
Many other elements are mingled with these 
in sparing quantities; but the great frame 
and substance of the earth is made of these 
three, so that wherever you stand on solid 
ground, in any country of the globe, the 
thing that is mainly under your feet will be 
either clay, limestone, or some condition of 
the earth of flint, mingled with both. 

These being what we have usually to deal 
with, Nature seems to have set herself to 
make these three substances as interesting 
to us, and as beautiful for us, as she can. 
The clay, being a soft and changeable sub- 
stance, she doesn't take much pains about, 
till it is baked; she brings the color into 
it only when it receives a permanent form. 
But the limestone and flint she paints, in 
her own way, in their native state : and her 
object in painting them seems to be much the 
same as in her painting of flowers ; to draw 
us, careless and idle human creatures, to 
watch her a little, and see what she is about 
— that being on the whole good for us, — 
her children. For Nature is always carry- 
ing on very strange work with this lime- 
stone and flint of hers ; laying down beds of 
them at the bottom of the sea; building 
islands out of the sea; filling chinks and 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 153 

veins in mountains with curious treasures; 
petrifying mosses, and trees, and shells ; in 
fact carrying. on all sorts of business, sub- 
terranean or submarine, which it would be 
highly desirable for us, who profit and live 
by it, to notice as it goes on. And ap- 
parently to lead us to do this, she makes 
picture-books for us of limestone and flint ; 
and tempts us, like foolish children as 
we are, to read her books by the pretty 
colors in them. The pretty colors in her 
limestone-books form those variegated 
marbles which all mankind have taken de- 
light to polish and build with from the 
beginning of time ; and the pretty colors in 
her flint-books form those agates, jaspers, 
cornelians, bloodstones, onyxes, cairngorms, 
chrysoprases, which men have in like man- 
ner taken delight to cut, and polish, and 
make ornaments of, from the beginning of 
time ; and yet, so much of babies are they, 
and so fond of looking at the pictures in- 
stead of reading the book, that I question 
whether, after six thousand years of cutting 
and polishing, there are above two or three 
people out of any given hundred, who know, 
or care to know, how a bit of agate or a bit 
of marble was made, or painted. 

How it was made, may not be always very 



154 NATURE STUDIES. 

easy to say; but with what it was painted 
there is no manner of question. All those 
beautiful violet veinings and variegations of 
the marbles of Sicily and Spain, the glowing 
orange and amber colors of those of Siena, 
the deep russet of that Rosso antico, and the 
blood-color of all the precious jaspers that 
enrich the temples of Italy ; and finally, all 
the lovely transitions of tint in the pebbles 
of Scotland and the Rhine, which form, 
though not the most precious, by far the 
most interesting portion of our modern 
jewellers' work; — all these are painted by 
Nature with this one material only, variously 
proportioned and applied — the oxide of 
iron. . . . 

But this is not all, nor the best part of the 
work of iron. Its service in producing these 
beautiful stones is only rendered to rich 
people, who can afford to quarry and polish 
them. But Nature paints for all the world, 
poor and rich together ; and while, there- 
fore, she thus adorns the innermost rocks 
of her hills, to tempt your investigation, or 
indulge your luxury, — she paints far more 
carefully the outsides of the hills, which are 
for the eyes of the shepherd and the plough- 
man . . . Have you ever considered, in 
speaking as we do so often of distant blue 



ABOUT THE EARTH. 155 

hills, what it is that makes them blue ? To 
a certain extent it is distance ; but distance 
alone will not do it. Many hills look white, 
however distant. That lovely dark purple 
color of our Welch and Highland hills is 
owing, not to their distance merely, but to 
their rocks. Some of their rocks are, indeed, 
too dark to be beautiful, being black or ashy 
gray; owing to imperfect and porous struc- 
ture. But when you see this dark color 
dashed with russet and blue, and coming 
out in masses among the green ferns, so 
purple that you can hardly tell at first 
whether it is rock or heather, then you 
must thank your old friend, the oxide of 
iron. 

But this is not all. It is necessary for the 
beauty of hill scenery that Nature should 
color not only her soft rocks, but her hard 
ones; and she colors them with the same 
thing, only more beautifully. Perhaps you 
have wondered at my use of the word 
"purple " so often of stones: but the Greeks, 
and still more the Romans, who had pro- 
found respect for purple, used it of stone 
long ago. You have all heard of "porphyry" 
as among the most precious of the harder 
massive stones. The color which gave it 
that noble name, as well as that which gives 



i 5 6 NATURE STUDIES. 

the flush to all the rosy granite of Egypt — 
yes, and to the rosiest summits of the Alps 
themselves — is still owing to the same sub- 
stance — your humble oxide of iron. 

The Two Paths ) Lecture V, pp. 104- in. 



JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 



The history of a mineral is not given by ascertain- 
ment of the number or the angles of the planes of 
its crystals, but by ascertaining the manner in which 
those crystals originate, increase, and associate. 

— In Montibus Sanctis^ Chap. I, p. 116. 



JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 

In the handful of shingle which you 
gather from the sea-beach, which the indis- 
criminate sea, with equality of eternal form, 
has only educated to be, every one, round, 
you will see little difference between the 
noble and mean stones. But the jewel- 
ler's trenchant education of them will tell 
you another story. Even the meanest will 
be better for it, but the noblest so much 
better that you can class the two together 
no more. The fair veins and colors are all 
clear now, and so stern is Nature's intent 
regarding this, that not only will the polish 
show which is best, but the best will take the 
most polish. You shall not merely see they 
have more virtue than the others, but see 
that more of virtue more clearly; and the less 
virtue there is, the more dimly you shall see 

what there is Of it— Time and Tide, Letter XXV, p. 230. 

Pebble — or crystal : in Scotland the main 
questions respecting these two main forms of 
silica are put to us, with a close solicitude, 
by the beautiful conditions of agate, and 
the glowing colors of the Cairngorm, which 

159 



160 NATURE STUDIES. 

have always variegated and illuminated the 

favorite jewelry of Scottish laird and lassie. 

May I hope, with especial reference to the 

favorite gem 
Of Scotland's mountain diadem, 

to prevail on some Scottish mineralogist to 
take up the . . . subject of the relation of 
color in minerals to their state of substance ; 
why, for instance, large and well-developed 
quartz crystals are frequently topaz color or 
smoke color, — never rose-color; while mas- 
sive quartz may be rose-color, and pure white 
or gray, but never smoke color ; again, why 
amethyst quartz may continually, be infinitely 
complex and multiplex in crystallization, but 
never warped; while smoky quartz may 
be continually found warped, but never, in 
the amethystine way, multiplex ; why, again, 
smoky quartz and Cairngorm are continu- 
ally found in short crystals, but never in 
long slender ones, — as, to take instance in 
another mineral, white beryl is usually short 
or even tabular, and green beryl long, almost 
in proportion to its purity? 

— In Montibus Sanctis , Chap. I, p. 112. 

A sapphire is the same stone as a ruby ; 
both are the pure earth of clay crystallized. 
No one knows why one is red and the other 



JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 161 

blue. A diamond is pure coal crystallized. 
An opal, pure flint — in a state of fixed jelly. 

— Hortus Inclusus, p. 66. 

Pick up the ruby . . . and look carefully 
at the beautiful hexagonal lines which 
gleam on its surface. ... I do not know 
what is the exact method of a ruby's con- 
struction ; but you see by these lines, what 
fine construction there is, even in this hard- 
est of stones (after the diamond,) which 
usually appears as a massive lump or knot. 
There is therefore no real mineralogical dis- 
tinction between needle crystals and knotted 
crystals, but, practically crystallized masses 
throw themselves into one of three groups 
. . . and appear either as Needles, as Folia, 
or as Knots; when they are in needles (or 
fibres) they make the stones or rocks formed 
out of them 'fibrous ' ; when they are in 
folia, they make them 'foliated" ; when they 
are in knots (or grains) ' granular.' Fibrous 
rocks are comparatively rare, in mass; but 
fibrous minerals are innumerable. . . . 

. . . Crystals have a limited, though a 
stern, code of morals ; — and their essential 
virtues are but two ; — the first is to be pure, 
and the second to be well shaped. 

"Pure! Does that mean clear — trans- 



162 NATURE STUDIES. 

parent ? " " No ; unless in the case of a 
transparent substance. You cannot have 
a transparent crystal of gold; but you may 
have a perfectly pure one." . . . 

... I call their shape only their second 
virtue, because it depends on time and acci- 
dent, and things which the crystal cannot 
help. If it is cooled too quickly, or shaken, 
it must take what shape it can ; but it seems 
as if, even then, it had in itself the power of 
rejecting impurity, if it has crystalline life 

enough.— The Ethics of the Dust, Lecture IV, p. 53, V, p. 57. 

It is seldom that any mineral crystallises 
alone. Usually two or three, under quite 
different crystalline laws, form together. 
They do this absolutely without flaw or fault, 
when they are in fine temper: and observe 
what this signifies. It signifies that the two, 
or more, minerals of different natures agree, 
somehow, between themselves, how much 
space each will want ; — agree which of them 
shall give away to the other at their junction ; 
or in what measure each will accommodate 
itself to the other's shape ! . . . They show 
exactly the same varieties of temper that 
human creatures might. Sometimes they 
yield the required place with perfect grace 
and courtesy; forming fantastic, but ex- 



JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 163 

quisitely finished groups ; and sometimes 
they will not yield at all ; but fight furiously 
for their places, losing all shape and honor, 
and even their own likeness, in the contest. 
There is, in reality, more likeness to some 
conditions of human feeling among stones 
than among plants. There is a far greater 
difference between kindly-tempered and ill- 
tempered crystals of the same mineral than 
between any two specimens of the same 
flower ; and the friendships and wars of crys- 
tals depend more definitely and curiously 
on their varieties of disposition, than any 
association of flowers. Here, for instance, 
is a good garnet, living with good mica ; one 
rich red, and the other silver white; the mica 
leaves exactly room enough for the garnet to 
crystallise comfortably in ; and the garnet 
lives happily in its little white house ; fitted 
to it, like a pholas in its cell. But here are 
wicked garnets living with wicked mica. 
See what ruin they make of each other! 
You cannot tell which is which ; the garnets 
look like dull red stains on the crumbling 

Stones. — The Ethics of the Dust, Chap. VI, pp. 71, 72. 

If you want to see the gracefullest and 
happiest caprices of which dust is capable 
you must go to the Hartz; — whether the 



1 64 NATURE STUDIES. 

mountains be picturesque or not — the tricks 
which the goblins (as I am told) teach the 
crystals in them, are incomparably pretty. 
They work chiefly on the mind of a docile, 
bluish -colored, carbonate of lime; which 
comes out of a grey limestone. The gob- 
lins take the greatest possible care of its 
education, and see that nothing happens to 
it to hurt its temper ; and when it may be 
supposed to have arrived at the crisis which 
is, to a well brought up mineral, what pres- 
entation at court is to a young lady — after 
which it is expected to set fashions — there's 
no end to its pretty ways of behaving. First 
it will make itself into pointed darts as fine 
as hoar-frost; here, it is changed into a white 
fur as fine as silk ; here into little crowns 
and circlets, as bright as silver ; as if for the 
gnome princesses to wear; here it is in beau- 
tiful little plates, for them to eat off; pres- 
ently it is in towers which they might be 
imprisoned in; presently in caves and cells, 
where they may make nun-gnomes of them- 
selves, and no gnome ever hear of them 
more ; here is some of it in sheaves, like 
corn ; here, some in drifts, like snow ; here, 
some in rays, like stars ; and, though these 
are, all of them, necessarily, shapes that the 
mineral takes in other places, they are all 



JEWELS OE THE EARTH. 165 

taken here with such a grace that you recog- 
nise the high caste and breeding of the 
crystals wherever you meet them ; and know 
at once they are Hartz-born. 

— The Ethics of the Bttst, Lecture VIII, pp. 101, 102. 

Today I've found a very soft purple agate, 
that looks as if it were nearly melted away 
with pity for birds and flies . . . and another 
piece of hard wooden agate with only a little 
ragged sky of blue here and there . . . and 
a group of crystals with grass of Epidote 
inside. . . . 

I am delighted with your lovely gift. . . . 
The perfection of the stone, its exquisite 
color, and flawless clearness, and the delicate 
cutting, which makes the light flash from it 
like a wave of the Lake, make it ... a per- 
fect mineralogical and heraldic jewel. . . . 

— Hortus Inclususy pp. 47, 48. 

Agates, I think of all stones, confess most 
of their past history. . . . Observe, first, you 
have the whole mass of the rock in motion, 
either contracting itself, and so gradually 
widening the cracks; or being compressed, 
and thereby closing them, and crushing their 
edges : — and if one part of its substance be 
softer, at the given temperature, than another, 



1 66 NATURE STUDIES. 

probably squeezing that softer substance out 
into the veins. Then the veins themselves, 
when the rock leaves them open by its contrac- 
tion, act with various power of suction upon 
its substance: — by capillary attraction when 
they are fine, — by that of pure vacuity when 
they are larger, or by changes in the constitu- 
tion and condensation of the mixed gases 
with which they have been originally filled. 
Those gases themselves may be supplied in 
all variation of volume and power from below; 
or slowly, by the decomposition of the rocks 
themselves; and, at changing temperatures, 
must exert relatively changing forces of de- 
composition and combination on the walls 
of the veins they fill; while water, at every 
degree of heat and pressure (from beds of 
everlasting ice, alternate with cliffs of native 
rock, to volumes of red-hot, or white hot, 
steam), congeals, and drips, and throbs, and 
thrills, from crag to crag : and breathes from 
pulse to pulse of foaming or fiery arteries, 
whose beating is felt through chains of the 
great islands of the Indian seas, as your own 
pulses lift your bracelets, and makes whole 
kingdoms of the world quiver in deadly 
earthquake, as if they were light as aspen 
leaves. And, remember, the poor little 
crystals have to live their lives, and mind 



JEWELS OF THE EARTH, 167 

their own affairs, in the midst of all this, as 
best they may. They are wonderfully like 
human creatures, — forget all that is going 
on if they don't see it, however dreadful ; and 
never think what is to happen to-morrow. 
They are spiteful or loving, and indolent or 
painstaking, and orderly or licentious, with 
no thought whatever of the lava or the flood 
which may break over them any day; and 
evaporate them into air-bubbles, or wash 
them into a solution of salts. And you may 
look at them, once understanding the sur- 
rounding conditions of their fate, with an 
endless interest. You will see crowds of 
unfortunate little crystals, who have been 
forced to constitute themselves in a hurry, 
their dissolving element being fiercely 
scorched away ; you will see them doing 
their best, bright and numberless, but tiny. 
Then you will find indulged crystals, who 
have had centuries to form themselves in, 
and have changed their mind and ways con- 
tinually; and have been tired, and taken 
heart again; and have been sick, and got 
well again; and thought they would try a 
different diet, and then thought better of it, 
and made but a poor use of their advantages, 
after all. And others you will see, who have 
begun life as wicked crystals ; and then have 



1 68 NATURE STUDIES. 

been impressed by alarming circumstances, 
and have become converted crystals, and be- 
haved amazingly for a little while, and fallen 
away again, and ended, but discreditably, 
perhaps, even in decomposition : so that one 
doesn't know what will become of them. 

And sometimes you will see deceitful 
crystals, that look as soft as velvet, and are 
deadly to all near them ; and sometimes you 
will see deceitful crystals, that seem flint- 
edged, and are endlessly gentle and true 
wherever gentleness and truth are needed. 
And sometimes you will see little child- 
crystals put to school like school-girls, and 
made to stand in rows ; and taken the great- 
est care of, and taught how to hold them- 
selves up and behave; and sometimes you 
will see unhappy little child-crystals left to 
lie about in the dirt, and pick up their 
living, and learn manners, where they can. 
And, sometimes you will see fat crystals eat- 
ing up thin ones, like great capitalists and 
little laborers ; and politico-economic crystals 
teaching the stupid ones how to eat each 
other, and cheat each other; and foolish 
crystals getting in the way of wise ones; 
and impatient crystals spoiling the plans of 
patient ones, irreparably; just as things go 
on in the world. 



JEWELS OE THE EARTH. 169 

And sometimes you may see hypocritical 
crystals taking the shape of others, though 
they are nothing like in their minds; and 
vampire crystals eating out the hearts of 
others ; and hermit-crab crystals living in the 
shells of others; and all these, besides the 
two great companies of war and peace, who 
ally themselves, resolutely to attack, or reso- 
lutely to defend. And for the close, you see 
the broad shadow and deadly force of inevit- 
able fate, above all this ; you see the multi- 
tudes of crystals whose time has come ; not a 
set time, as with us, but yet a time, sooner or 
later, when they must all give up their crystal 
ghosts ; — when the strength by which they 
grew, and the breath given them to breathe, 
pass away from them ; and they fail, and are 
consumed, and vanish away; and another gen- 
eration is brought to life, framed out of their 

ashes. — The Ethics of the Dust t Chap. IX, pp. 1 18-120. 

Perhaps the best, though the most famil- 
iar example we could take of the nature and 
power of consistence, will be that of the 
possible changes in the dust we tread on. 

Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly 
arrive at a more absolute type of impurity 
than the mud or slime of a damp over- 
trodden path, in the outskirts of a manu- 



i 7 o NATURE STUDIES. 

facturing town. I do not say mud of the 
road, because that is mixed with animal 
refuse; but take merely an ounce or two 
of the blackest slime of a beaten footpath 
on a rainy day, near a large manufacturing 
town. 

That slime we shall find in most cases, 
composed of clay (or brickdust, which is 
burnt clay) mixed with soot, a little sand, 
and water. All these elements are at helpless 
war with each other, and destroy recipro- 
cally each other's nature and power, com- 
peting and fighting for place at every tread 
of your foot : — sand squeezing out clay, and 
clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling 
everywhere and defiling the whole. 

Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is 
left in perfect rest, and that its elements 
gather together, like to like, so that their 
atoms may get into the closest relations 
possible. 

Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all 
foreign substance, it gradually becomes a 
white earth, already very beautiful ; and fit, 
with help of congealing fire, to be made 
into finest porcelain, and painted on, and be 
kept in kings' palaces. But such artificial 
consistence is not its best. Leave it still 
quiet to follow its own instincts of unity, and 



JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 171 

it becomes not only white, but clear; not 
only clear, but hard ; not only clear and hard, 
but so set that it can deal with light in a 
wonderful way, and gather out of it the 
loveliest blue rays only, refusing the rest. 
We call that a sapphire. 

Such being the consummation of the clay, 
we give similar permission of quiet to the 
sand. It also becomes, first, a white earth, 
then proceeds to grow clear and hard, and 
at last arranges itself in mysterious, infi- 
nitely fine, parallel lines, which have the 
power of reflecting not merely the blue 
rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red 
rays in the greatest beauty in which they 
can be seen through any hard material 
whatsoever. 

We call it then an opal. 

In next order the soot sets to work : it 
cannot make itself white at first, but instead 
of being discouraged, tries harder and 
harder, and comes out clear at last, and the 
hardest thing in the world; and for the 
blackness that it had, obtains in exchange 
the power of reflecting all the rays of the 
sun at once in the vividest blaze that any 
solid thing can shoot. We call it then a 
diamond. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VIII, Chap. I, pp. 205, 206. 



I 7 2 



NATURE STUDIES. 



The black thing, which is one of the pret- 
tiest of the very few pretty black things in 
the world, is called ' Tourmaline.' It may 
be transparent, and green or red as well as 
black, but this is the commonest state of 
it, — opaque, and as black as jet. 

— Ethics of the Dust y Lecture IX, p. in. 

Seize firmly that first idea of the manna, 
as the type of the bread which is the Word 
of God; and then look on for the English 
word " crystal " in Job, of Wisdom. " It can- 
not be valued with the gold of Ophir, with 
the precious onyx, or the sapphire : the gold 
and the crystal shall not equal it, neither 
shall it be valued with pure gold"; in 
Ezekiel, " firmament of the terrible crystal," 
or in the Apocalypse, "A sea of glass like 
unto crystal, — water of life, clear as crystal," 
— "light of the city like a stone most pre- 
cious, even like a jasper stone, clear as 
crystal." Your understanding the true 
meaning of all these passages depends on 
your distinct conception of the permanent 
clearness and hardness of the Rock-crystal. 

The three substances named here in the 
first account of Paradise, stand generally as 
types — the Gold of all precious metals : the 
Crystal of all clear precious stones prized 



JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 173 

for lustre ; the Onyx of all opaque precious 
stones prized for colour. 

Now note the importance of this grouping. 
The Gold, or precious metal, is significant 
of all that the power of the beautiful earth, 
gold, and of the strong earth, iron, has done 
for and against man. . . . 

The Crystal is significant of all the power 
that jewels, from diamonds down through 
every Indian gem to the glass beads which 
we now make for ball-dresses, have had over 
the imagination and economy of men and 
women — from the day that Adam drank of 
the water of the crystal river till this hour. 

The Onyx is the type of all stones ar- 
ranged in bands of different colours : it means 
primarily, nail-stone — showing a separation 
like the white half-crescent at the root of the 
finger-nail ; not without some idea of its sub- 
jection to the laws of life. Of these stones, 
part, which are flinty, are the material used 
for cameos and all manner of engraved work 
and pietra dura; but in the great idea of 
banded or belted stones, they include the 
whole range of marble, and especially ala- 
baster, giving the name to the alabastra, or 
vases used especially for the containing of 
precious unguents, themselves more precious: 
so that this stone, as best representative of 



174 NATURE STUDIES. 

all others, is chosen to be the last gift of men 
to Christ, as gold is their first; incense with 
both; at His birth, gold and frankincense; at 
His death, alabaster and spikenard. 

The two sources of the material wealth of 
all nations were thus offered to the King 
of men in their simplicity. But their power 
among civilized nations has been owing to 
their workmanship. And if we are to ask 
whether the gold and the stones are to be 
holy, much more have we to ask if the 
worker in gold, and the worker in stone, are 
to be conceived as exercising holy function. 

Now, as we ask of a stone, to know what 
it is, what it can do, or suffer, so of a human 
creature, to know what it is, we ask what 
it can do or suffer. So that we have two 
scientific questions put to us in this matter: 
how the stones came to be what they are — 
or the law of Crystallization: and how the 
jewellers came to be what they are — or the 
law of Inspiration. 

. . . The same tradition, whatever its 
value, which gave us the commands we pro- 
fess to obey for our moral law, implies also 
the necessity of inspired instruction for the 
proper practice of the art of jewellery; and 
connects the richness of the earth in gold 
and jewels with the pleasure of Heaven that 



JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 



75 



we should use them under its direction. 
The scientific mind will of course draw back 
in scorn from the idea of such possibility; 
but then, the scientific mind can neither 
design, itself, nor perceive the power of de- 
sign, in others. And practically you will 
find that all noble designs in jewellery what- 
soever, from the beginning of the world till 
now, has been either instinctive, — done, that 
is to say, by tutorship of nature, with the 
innocent felicity and security of purely 
animal art, — Etruscan, Irish, Indian, or Peru- 
vian gold being interwoven with a fine and 
unerring grace of industry, like the touch of 
the bee on its cell, and of the bird on her 
nest, — or else, has been wrought into its 
finer forms, under the impulse of religion in 
sacred service, in crosier, chalice, and lamp : 
and that the best beauty of its profane ser- 
vice has been debased from these. And the 
three greatest masters of design in jewellery, 
the "facile principes" of the entire European 
School, are — centrally, the one who defi- 
nitely worked always with appeal for inspira- 
tion — Angelico of Fesole ; and on each side 
of him, the two most earnest reformers of 
the morals of the Christian Church — Hol- 
bein and Sandro Botticelli. 

I have first answered the question — how 



176 NATURE STUDIES. 

men come to be jewellers. Next how do 
stones come to be jewels ? It seems that by 
all religious, no less than all profane, teach- 
ing or tradition these substances are asserted 
to be precious — useful to man, and sacred 
to God. 

There are three great laws by which they, 
and the metals they are to be set in, are 
prepared for us ; and at present all these 
are mysteries to us. 

The first, the mystery by which, "surely 
there is a vein for the silver and a place for 
the gold whence they find it" — 

The second mystery is that of crystalli- 
zation ; by which, obeying laws no less arbi- 
trary than those by which the bee builds 
her cell — the water produced by the sweet 
miracles of cloud and spring freezes into the 
hexagonal stars of the hoar-frost ; — the flint, 
which can be melted and diffused like water, 
freezes also, like water, into these hexagonal 
towers of everlasting ice, and the clay, which 
can be dashed on the potter's wheel as it 
pleaseth the potter to make it, can be frozen 
by the touch of Heaven into the hexagonal 
star of Heaven's own colour — the sapphire. 

The third mystery, the gathering of crys- 
tals themselves into ranks or bands, by 
which Scotch pebbles are made. . . . 

— Deucalion, Vol. I, Chap. VII, pp. 66-71. 



JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 177 

There are no natural objects out of which 
more can be learned than stones. They 
seem to have been created especially to re- 
ward a patient observer. Nearly all other 
objects in Nature can be seen to some ex- 
tent, without patience, and are pleasant even 
in being half seen. Trees, clouds and rivers 
are enjoyed even by the careless : but the 
stone under his foot has for carelessness 
nothing in it but stumbling: no pleasure is 
languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor 
good of any kind : nothing but symbolism 
of the hard heart and the unfatherly gift. 
And yet, do but give it some reverence and 
watchfulness, and there is bread of thought 
in it, more than in any other lowly feature 
of all the landscape. 

For a stone, when it is examined, will be 
found a mountain in miniature. The fine- 
ness of Nature's work is so great, that, in a 
slight block, a foot or two in diameter, she 
can compress as many changes of form and 
structure, on a small scale, as she needs for 
her mountains on a large one ; and taking 
moss for forests, and grains of crystal for 
crags, the surface of a stone, in by far the plu- 
rality of instances, is more interesting than 
the surface of an ordinary hill, more fantastic 
in form and incomparably richer in color. 

—Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XVIII, pp. 376, 377. 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 



The mountain kingdom of which I claim possession 
by the law of love. — Pra>terita> Vol. Ill, Chap. II, p. 412. 

Your power of seeing mountains cannot be devel- 
oped either by your vanity, your curiosity, or your 
love of muscular exercise. It depends on the culti- 
vation of the instrument of sight itself, and of the 
soul that uses it. — Deucalion^ Vol. I, Chap. I, p. II. 



VI. 

THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 

The glory of a cloud — without its wane ; 

The stillness of the earth — but not its gloom ; 
The loveliness of life — without its pain ; 

The peace — but not the hunger of the tomb ! 
Ye Pyramids of God ! around whose bases 

The sea foams noteless in his narrow cup ; 

And the unseen movements of the earth send up 
A murmur which your lulling snow effaces 

Like the deer's footsteps. Thrones imperishable ! 

About whose adamantine steps the breath 

Of dying generations vanisheth, 

Less cognizable than clouds. . . . 

— Poems — The Alps — p. 310. 

The feeding of the rivers and the purify- 
ing of the winds are the least of the services 
appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of 
the human heart for the beauty of God's 
working — to startle its lethargy with the 
deep and pure agitation of astonishment — 
are their higher missions. They are as a 
great and noble architecture; first giving 
shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also 
with mighty sculpture and painted legend. 
It is impossible to examine in their con- 
nected system the features of even the most 

i8x 



i82 NATURE STUDIES. 

ordinary mountain scenery, without con- 
cluding that it has been prepared in order 
to unite, as far as possible, and in the clos- 
est compass, every means of delighting and 
sanctifying the heart of man. " As far as 
possible" ; that is, as far as is consistent with 
the fulfilment of the sentence of condem- 
nation on the whole earth. Death must be 
upon the hills ; and the cruelty of the tem- 
pests smite them, and the brier and thorn 
spring up upon them: but they so smite, as 
to bring their rocks into the fairest forms; 
and so spring, as to make the very desert 
blossom as the rose. . . . Even among our 
own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, 
though often too barren to be perfectly 
beautiful, and always too low to be per- 
fectly sublime, it is strange how many deep 
sources of delight are gathered into the 
compass of their glens and vales ; and how, 
down to the most secret cluster of their 
far-away flowers, and the idlest leap of 
their straying streamlets, the whole heart of 
Nature seems still thirsting to give, and 
still to give, shedding forth her everlasting 
beneficence with a profusion so patient, so 
passionate, that our utmost observance and 
thankfulness are but, at last, neglect of her 
nobleness, and apathy to her love. 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 183 

But among the true mountains of the 
greater orders the Divine purpose of appeal 
at once to all the faculties of the human 
spirit becomes still more manifest. Inferior 
hills ordinarily interrupt, in some degree, 
the richness of the valleys at their feet. . . . 

. . . But the great mountains lift the low- 
lands on their sides. Let the reader imagine, 
first, the appearance of the most varied plain 
of some richly cultivated country; let him 
imagine it dark with graceful woods, and 
soft with deepest pastures; let him fill the 
space of it, to the utmost horizon, with in- 
numerable and changeful incidents of scen- 
ery and life; leading pleasant streamlets 
through its meadows, strewing clusters of 
cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet 
footpaths through its avenues, and animat- 
ing its fields with happy flocks, and slow 
wandering spots of cattle : and when he has 
wearied himself with endless imagining, and 
left no space without some loveliness of its 
own, let him conceive all this great plain, 
with its infinite treasures of natural beauty 
and happy human life, gathered up in God's 
hands from one edge of the horizon to the 
other, like a woven garment; and shaken 
into deep falling folds, as the robes droop 
from a king's shoulders ; all its bright rivers 



184 NATURE STUDIES. 

leaping into cataracts along the hollows 
of its fall, and all its forests rearing them- 
selves aslant against its slopes, as a rider 
rears himself back when his horse plunges ; 
and all its villages nestling themselves into 
the new windings of its glens; and all its 
pastures thrown into steep waves of green- 
sward, dashed with dew along the edges of 
their folds, and sweeping down into endless 
slopes, with a cloud here and there lying 
quietly, half on the grass, half in the air; 
and he will have as yet, in all this lifted 
world, only the foundation of one of the 
great Alps. And whatever is lovely in the 
lowland scenery becomes lovelier in this 
change; the trees which grew heavily and 
stiffly from the level line of plain assume 
strange curves of strength and grace as they 
bend themselves against the mountain side ; 
they breathe more freely, and toss their 
branches more carelessly as each climbs 
higher, looking to the clear light above the 
topmost leaves of its brother tree ; the flow- 
ers which on the arable plain fell before the 
plough, now find out for themselves unap- 
proachable places, where year by year they 
gather into happier fellowship, and fear no 
evil : and the streams which in the level 
land crept in dark eddies by unwholesome 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 185 

banks, now move in showers of silver, and 
are clothed with rainbows, and bring health 
and life wherever the glance of their waves 
can reach. 

And although this beauty seems at first, 
in its wildness, inconsistent with the service 
of man, it is in fact more necessary to his 
happy existence than all the level and easily 
subdued land which he rejoices to possess. 

... It may not be profitless to review 
briefly the nature of the three great offices 
which mountain ranges are appointed to 
fulfil, in order to preserve the health and 
increase the happiness of mankind. 

Their first use is of course to give motion 
to (fresh) water. . . . 

The second great use of mountains is to 
maintain a constant change in the currents 
and nature of the air. . . . 

The third great use of mountains is to 
cause perpetual change in the soils of the 
earth. . . . 

. . . And it is not, in reality, a degrading, 
but a true, large, and ennobling view of the 
mountain ranges of the world, if we compare 
them to heaps of fertile and fresh earth, 
laid up by a prudent gardener beside his 
garden beds, whence, at intervals, he casts 
on them some scattering of new and virgin 



186 NATURE STUDIES. 

ground. That which we so often lament 
as convulsion or destruction is nothing else 
than the momentary shaking of the dust 
from the spade. . . . 

I have not spoken of the local and pecul- 
iar utilities of mountains : I do not count the 
benefit of the supply of summer streams 
from the moors of the higher ranges — of the 
various medicinal plants which are nested 
among their rocks — of the delicate pastur- 
age which they furnish for cattle — of the 
forests in which they bear timber for ship- 
ping — the stones they supply for building, 
or the ores of metal which they collect into 
spots open to discovery, and easy for work- 
ing. All these benefits are of a secondary 
or a limited nature. But the three great 
functions — those of giving motion and 
change to water, air, and earth — are indis- 
pensable to human existence ; they are oper- 
ations to be regarded with as full a depth 
of gratitude as the laws which bid the tree 
bear fruit, or the seed multiply itself in the 
earth. And thus those desolate and threat- 
ening ranges of dark mountains, which, in 
nearly all ages of the world, men have 
looked upon with aversion or with terror, 
and shrunk back from as if they were 
haunted by perpetual images of death, are, 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 187 

in reality, sources of life and happiness far 
fuller and more beneficent than all the 
bright fruitfulness of the plain. 

The valleys only feed ; the mountains 
feed and guard and strengthen us. We 
take our ideas of fearfulness and sublimity 
alternately from the mountains and the sea ; 
but we associate them unjustly. The sea 
wave, with all its beneficence, is yet devour- 
ing and terrible, but the silent mass of the 
blue mountain is lifted toward heaven in 
a stillness of perpetual mercy; and the one 
surge, unfathomable in its darkness, the 
other, unshaken in its faithfulness, forever 
bear the seal of their appointed symbolism, 

" Thy Justice is like the Great Mountains 
Thy Judgments are a great Deep." 

— In Montibus Sanctis, Chap. II, pp. 130-139. 
— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Chap. VII. 

In approaching any large mountain range, 
the ground over which the spectator passes, 
if he examine it with any intelligence, will 
almost always arrange itself in his mind 
under three great heads. There will be, 
first, the ground of the plains or valleys he 
is about to quit, composed of sand, clay, 
gravel, rolled stones, and variously mingled 
soils. . , . 



1 88 NATURE STUDIES. 

As he advances yet farther into the hill 
district, he finds the rocks around him as- 
suming a gloomier apd more majestic con- 
dition. Their tint "darkens ; their outlines 
become wild and irregular; and whereas 
before they had only appeared at the road- 
side in narrow ledges among the turf, or 
glanced out from among the thickets above 
the brooks in white walls and fantastic tow- 
ers, they now rear themselves up in solemn 
and shattered masses far and near; softened, 
indeed, with strange harmony of clouded 
colors, but possessing the whole scene with 
their iron spirit ; and rising, in all proba- 
bility, into eminences as much prouder in 
actual elevation than those of the inter- 
mediate rocks, as more powerful in their 
influence over every minor feature of the 
landscape. 

And when the traveller proceeds to ob- 
serve closely the materials of which these 
nobler ranges are composed, he finds also 
a complete change in their internal struc- 
ture. They are no longer formed of delicate 
sand or dust — each particle of that dust the 
same as every other, and the whole mass 
depending for its hardness merely on their 
closely cemented unity; but they are now 
formed of several distinct substances visibly 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 189 

unlike each other; and not pressed, but 
crystallized into one mass — crystallized into 
a unity far more perfect than that of the 
dusty limestone, but yet without the least 
mingling of their several natures with each 
other. . . . 

. . . There is one lesson evidently in- 
tended to be taught by the different char- 
acters of these rocks, which we must not 
allow to escape us. We have to observe, 
first, the state of perfect powerlessness, and 
loss of all beauty, exhibited in those beds 
of earth in which the separate pieces or 
particles are entirely independent of each 
other, more especially in the gravel whose 
pebbles have all been rolled into one shape ; 
secondly, the greater degree of permanence, 
power, and beauty, possessed by the rocks 
whose component atoms have more affec- 
tion and attraction for each other, though 
all of one kind ; and lastly, the utmost form 
and highest beauty of the rocks in which 
the several atoms have all different shapes, 
characters, and offices ; but are inseparably 
united by some fiery or baptismal process 
which has purified them all. . . . 

. . . All these orders of substance agree 
in one character, that of being more or less 
frangible or soluble. . . . 



i 9 o NATURE STUDIES, 

. . . Perfect permanence and absolute se- 
curity were evidently in no wise intended. 
It would have been as easy for the Creator 
to have made mountains of steel as of gran- 
ite, of adamant as of lime; but this was 
clearly no part of the Divine counsels ; 
mountains were to be destructible and 
frail — to melt under the soft lambency of 
the streamlet, to shiver before the subtle 
wedge of the frost, to wither with untraceable 
decay in their own substance — and yet, 
under all these conditions of destruction, 
to be maintained in magnificent eminence 
before the eyes of men. 

— In Montibus Sanctis, Chap. Ill, pp. 140-146. 
— Modern Painters, Part V, the beginning of Chap. VIII. 

The higher mountains have their scenes 
of power and vastness, their blue precipices 
and cloud -like snows; why should they 
also have the best and fairest colors given 
to their foreground rocks, and overburden 
the human mind with wonder; while the less 
majestic scenery, tempting us to the observ- 
ance of details for which amidst the higher 
mountains we had no admiration left, is yet, 
in the beauty of those very details, as infe- 
rior as it is in the scale of magnitude ? 

I believe the answer must be, simply, that 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 191 

it is not good for man to live among what 
is most beautiful: — that he is a creature 
incapable of satisfaction by anything upon 
earth; and that to allow him habitually to 
possess, in any kind whatsoever, the utmost 
the earth can give, is the surest way to cast 
him into lassitude or discontent. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XI, p. 172. 

All mountains, in some degree, but es- 
pecially those which are composed of soft 
or decomposing substance, are delicately 
and symmetrically furrowed by the descent 
of streams. The traces of their action com- 
mence at the very summits, fine as threads 
and multitudinous, like the uppermost 
branches of a delicate tree. They unite in 
groups as they descend, concentrating 
gradually into dark undulating ravines, into 
which the body of the mountain descends 
on each side, at first in a convex curve, but 
at the bottom with the same uniform slope 
on each side which it assumes in its final 
descent to the plain, unless the rock be very 
hard. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. Ill, p. 51. 

I might devote half a volume to a descrip- 
tion of the fantastic and incomprehensible 



192 NATURE STUDIES. 

arrangement of these rocks (slaty crystal- 
lines) and their veins, but all that is necessary 
for the general reader to know or remember, 
is this broad fact of the undulation of their 
whole substance. For there is something, it 
seems to me, inexpressibly marvellous in this 
phenomenon, largely looked at. It is to be 
remembered that these are the rocks which, 
on the average, will be oftenest observed by 
the human race. The central granites are 
too far removed, the lower rocks too common, 
to be carefully studied; these slaty crystal- 
lines form the noblest hills that are easily 
accessible, and seem to be thus calculated 
especially to attract observation, and reward 
it. Well, we begin to examine them; and 
first we find a notable hardness in them, and 
a thorough boldness of general character, 
which makes us regard them as very types 
of perfect rocks. They have nothing of the 
look of dried earth about them, nothing 
petty or limited in the display of their bulk. 
Where they are, they seem to form the 
world ; no mere bank of a river here, or of a 
lane there, peeping out among the hedges or 
forests: but from the lowest valley to the 
highest clouds, all is theirs — one adaman- 
tine dominion and rigid authority of rock. 
We yield ourselves to the impression of 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 193 

their eternal, unconquerable stubbornness of 
strength ; their mass seem the least yield- 
ing, least to be softened, or in anywise dealt 
with by external force, of all earthly sub- 
stance. And, behold, as we look farther 
into it, it is all touched and troubled, like 
waves by a summer breeze ; rippled, far more 
delicately than seas or lakes are rippled; 
they only undulate along their surface — 
this rock trembles through its every fibre, 
like the chords of an ^Eolian harp — like the 
stillest air of spring with the echoes of a 
child's voice. Into the heart of all those 
great mountains, through every tossing of 
their boundless crests, and deep beneath all 
their unfathomable defiles, flows that strange 
quivering of their substance. Other and 
weaker things seem to express their subjec- 
tion to an Infinite power only by momentary 
terrors ; as the weeds bow down before the 
feverish wind, and the sound of the going in 
the tops of the taller trees passes on before 
the clouds, and the fitful opening of pale 
spaces on the dark water as if some invisible 
hand were casting dust abroad upon it, gives 
warning of the anger that is to come, we 
may well imagine that there is indeed a fear 
passing upon the grass, and leaves, and 
waters, at the presence of some great spirit 



i 9 4 NATURE STUDIES. 

commissioned to let the tempest loose : but 
the terror passes, and their sweet rest is 
perpetually restored to the pastures and the 
waves. Not so to the mountains. They, 
which at first seemed strengthened beyond 
the dread of any violence or change, are yet 
also ordained to bear upon them the symbol 
of a perpetual Fear : the tremor which fades 
from the soft lake and gliding river is sealed, 
to all eternity, upon the rock; and while 
things that pass visibly from birth to death 
may sometimes forget their feebleness, the 
mountains are made to possess a perpetual 
memorial of their infancy, — that infancy 
which the prophet saw in his vision : " I 
beheld the earth, and lo, it was without 
form, and void, and the heavens, and they 
had no light. I beheld the mountains, and 
lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved 
lightly. 

Thus far may we trace the apparent typi- 
cal signification of the structure of those 
noble rocks. The material uses of this 
structure are not less important. These sub- 
stances of the higher mountains, it is always 
to be remembered, seem to be so hard as to 
enable them to be raised into, and remain 
in, the most magnificent forms. 

— Modern Painters,Vo\. IV, Part V, Chap. IX, pp. 156-158. 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 195 

The rocks which are destitute of mica, 
or in which the mica lies irregularly, or in 
which it is altogether absent, I shall call 
Compact Crystallines. — Under this head 
are embraced the large group of the gran- 
ites, syenites, and porphries — rocks which 
all agree in . . . variety of color. . . . The 
method of their composition out of different 
substances necessitates their being all more 
or less spotted or dashed with various col- 
ors; there being generally a prevalent ground 
color, with other subordinate hues broken 
over it, forming for the most part, tones of 
silver grey, of warm, but subdued red, or 
purple. Now there is in this a very mar- 
vellous provision for the central ranges. 
Other rocks, placed lower among the hills 
receive color upon their surfaces from all 
kinds of minute vegetation: but these 
higher and more exposed rocks are liable to 
be in many parts barren ; and the wild forms 
into which they are thrown necessitate their 
being often freshly broken, so as to bring 
their pure color, untempered in anywise, 
frankly into sight. Hence it is appointed 
that this color shall not be raw or monoto- 
nous, but composed — as all beautiful colors 
must be composed — by mingling of many 
hues in one. Not that there is any aim at 



i 9 6 NATURE STUDIES. 

attractive beauty in these rocks; they are 
intended to constitute solemn and desolate 
scenes; and there is nothing delicately or 
variously disposed in their colors. Such 
beauty would have been inconsistent with 
their expression of power and terror, and 
it is reserved for the marble and other rocks 
of inferior office. But their color is grave 
and perfect; closely resembling in many 
cases, the sort of hue reached by cross- 
checkering in the ground of fourteenth- 
century manuscripts, and peculiarly calcu- 
lated for distant effects of light; being for 
the most part, slightly warm in tone, so as 
to receive with full advantage the red and 
orange rays of sunlight. This warmth is 
almost always farther aided by a glowing 
orange color, derived from the decompo- 
sition of the iron which, though in small 
quantity, usually is an essential element in 
them: the orange hue forms itself in un- 
equal veins and spots upon the surfaces 
which have been long exposed, more or less 
darkening them; and a very minute black 
lichen, — so minute as to look almost like 
spots of black paint — a little opposed and 
warmed by the golden Lichen geographicus, 
still farther subdues the paler hues of the 
highest granite rocks. Now, when a surface 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 197 

of this kind is removed to a distance of four 
or five miles, and seen under warm light 
through soft air, the orange becomes russet, 
more or less inclining to pure red, accord- 
ing to the power of the rays ; but the black 
of the lichens becomes pure dark blue ; and 
the result of their combination is that pecul- 
iar reddish purple which is so strikingly the 
characteristic of the rocks of the higher 
Alps. . . . This second characteristic is a 
tough hardness — a grave hardness, which 
will bear many blows before it yields. . . . 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. VIII, p. 145. 

Nature gives us in these mountains a 
clear demonstration of her will. She is here 
driven to make fracture the law of being. 
She cannot tuft the rock-edges with moss, 
or round them by water, or hide them with 
leaves and roots. She is bound to produce a 
form admirable to human beings, by contin- 
ual breaking away of substance. And behold 
— so soon as she is compelled to do this — she 
changes the law of fracture itself. " Growth," 
she seems to say, "is not essential to my 
work, nor concealment, nor softness, but cur- 
vature is ; and if I must produce my forms 
by breaking them, the fracture itself shall 
be in curves. If, instead of dew and sun- 



198 NATURE STUDIES. 

shine, the only instruments I am to use are 
the lightning and the frost, then their forked 
tongues and crystal wedges shall still work 
out my laws of tender line. Devastation 
instead of nurture may be the task of all my 
elements, and age after age may only pro- 
long the unrenovated ruin ; but the appoint- 
ments of typical beauty which have been 
made over all creatures shall not therefore 
be abandoned ; and the rocks shall be ruled 
in their perpetual perishing, by the same 
ordinances that direct the bending of the 
reed and the blush of the rose." 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XIV, p. 246. 

As we pass beneath the hills which have 
been shaken by earthquake and torn by 
convulsion, we find that periods of perfect 
repose succeeded those of destruction. The 
pools of calm water lie clear beneath their 
fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the 
reeds whisper among their shadows ; the vil- 
lage rises again over the forgotten graves, 
and its church-tower, white through the 
storm-twilight, proclaims a renewed appeal 
to His protection in whose hand " are all the 
corners of the earth, and the strength of the 
hills is His also." There is no loveliness 
of Alpine valley that does not teach the 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 199 

same lesson. It is just where "the moun- 
tain falling cometh to naught and the rock 
is removed out of his place," that, in process 
of years, the fairest meadows bloom between 
the fragments, the clearest rivulets murmur 
from their crevices among the flowers, and 
the clustered cottages, each sheltered be- 
neath some strength of mossy stone, now 
to be removed no more, and with their pas- 
tured flocks around them, safe from the 
eagle's stoop, and the wolf's ravin, have 
written upon their fronts, in simple words, 
the mountaineers faith in the ancient prom- 
ise " Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruc- 
tion when it cometh." . . . 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XVIII, p. 391. 

The best image which the world can give 
of Paradise is in the slope of the meadows, 
orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a 
great Alp, with its purple' rocks and eternal 
snows above; this excellence not being in 
any wise referable to feeling, or individual 
preferences, but demonstrable by calm enu- 
meration of the number of lovely colors on 
the rocks, the varied grouping of the trees, 
and quantity of noble incidents in stream, 
crag, or cloud, presented to the eye at any 
given moment 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XX, p. 427. 



2oo NATURE STUDIES. 

I do not know any district possessing more 
pure or uninterrupted fulness of mountain 
character (and that of the highest order), or 
which appears to have been less disturbed 
by foreign agencies, than that which borders 
the course of the Trient between Valorsine 
and Martigny. The paths which lead to it 
out of the valley of the Rhone, rising at first 
in steep circles among the walnut trees, like 
winding stairs among the pillars of a Gothic 
tower, retire over the shoulders of the hills 
into a valley almost unknown, but thickly 
inhabited by an industrious and patient 
population. Along the ridges of the rocks, 
smoothed by old glaciers into long, dark, 
billowy swellings, like the backs of plunging 
dolphins, the peasant watches the slow color- 
ing of the tufts of moss and roots of herb 
which, little by little, gather a feeble soil 
over the iron substance; then, supporting the 
narrow strip of clinging ground with a few 
stones, he subdues it to the spade; and in 
a year or two a little crest of corn is seen 
waving upon the rocky casque. The irregu- 
lar meadows run in and out like inlets 
of lake among these harvested rocks, sweet 
with perpetual streamlets, that seem always 
to have chosen the steepest places to come 
down, for the sake of the leaps, scattering 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 201 

their handfuls of crystal this way and that, 
as the wind takes them, with all the grace, 
but with none of the formalism, of fountains; 
divided into fanciful change of dash and 
spring, yet with the seal of their granite 
channels upon them, as the lightest play of 
human speech may bear the seal of a past 
toil, and closing back out of their spray to 
lave the rigid angles, and brighten with 
silver fringes and glassy films each lower 
and lower step of sable stone ; until at last, 
gathered all together again, — except, per- 
haps, some chance drops caught on the 
apple-blossom, where it has budded a little 
nearer the cascade than it did last spring, — 
they find their way down to the turf, and 
lose themselves in that silently; with quiet 
depth of clear water furrowing among the 
grass blades, and looking only like their 
shadow, but presently emerging again in 
little startled gushes and laughing hurries, 
as if they had remembered suddenly that the 
day was too short for them to get clown the 
hill. 

Green field, and glowing rock, and glanc- 
ing streamlet, all slope together in the sun- 
shine towards the brows of the ravines, 
where the pines take up their own dominion 
of saddened shade : and with everlasting roar 



202 NATURE STUDIES. 

in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder 
down pale from the glaciers, filling all their 
chasms with enchanted cold, beating them- 
selves to pieces against the great rocks 
that they have themselves cast down, and 
forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly 
poise. 

The mountain paths stoop to these glens 
in forky zigzags, leading to some gray and 
narrow arch, all fringed under its shuddering 
curves with the ferns that fear the light: a 
cross of rough-hewn pine, iron-bound to its 
parapet, standing dark against the lurid fury 
of the foam. Far up the glen, as we pause 
beside the cross, the sky is seen through the 
openings in the pines, thin with excess of 
light: and in its clear consuming flame 
of white space, the summits of the rocky 
mountains are gathered into solemn crowns 
and circlets, all flushed in that strange, faint 
silence of possession by the sunshine which 
has in it so deep a melancholy : full of power, 
yet as frail as shadows, lifeless like the walls 
of a sepulchre, yet beautiful in tender fall of 
crimson folds, like the veil of some sea-spirit, 
that lives and dies as the foam flashes ; fixed 
on a perpetual throne, stern against all 
strength, lifted above all sorrow, and yet 
effaced and melted utterly into the air by 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 203 

that last sunbeam that has crossed to them 
from between the two golden clouds. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XIX, pp. 393-395. 

The footmark of a glacier is just as easily 
recognizable as the trail of any well-known 
animal. . . . 

Its universal effect is to round and soften 
the contours of the mountains subjected to 
it; so that a glacier may be considered as 
a vast instrument of friction, a white sand- 
paper, applied slowly but irresistibly to all 
the roughnesses of the hill which it covers. 
And this effect is of course greatest when 
the ice flows fastest, and contains more em- 
bedded stones ; that is to say, greater toward 
the lower part of a mountain than near its 
summit 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XIII, pp. 217, 218. 

I suppose that my readers must be gener- 
ally aware that glaciers are masses of ice 
in slow motion, at the rate of from ten to 
twenty inches a day, and that the stones 
which are caught between them and the 
rocks over which they pass, or which are 
embedded in the ice and dragged along by 
it over those rocks, are of course subjected 
to a crushing and grinding power altogether 



2o 4 NATURE STUDIES. 

unparalleled by any other force in constant 
action. The dust to which these stones are 
reduced by the friction is carried down by 
the streams which flow from the melting 
glacier, so that the water which in the morn- 
ing may be pure, owing what little strength 
it has chiefly to the rock springs, is in 
the afternoon not only increased in volume, 
but whitened with the dissolved dust of 
granite, in proportion to the heat of the pre- 
ceding hours of the day, and to the power 
and size of the glacier which feeds it. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XII, pp. 179, 180. 

Of the visible glaciers couched upon the 
visible Alps two great facts are very clearly 
ascertainable. . . . The first great fact to be 
recognized concerning them is that they are 
Fluid bodies. Sluggishly fluid, indeed, but 
definitely and completely so; and therefore, 
they do not scramble down, nor tumble 
down, nor crawl down, nor slip down, but 
flow down. They do not move like leeches, 
nor like caterpillars, nor like stones, but like, 
what they are made of, water. 

The second fact is that last summer I was 
able to cross the dry bed of a glacier, which 
I had seen flowing two hundred feet deep, 
over the same spot, forty years ago. And 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 205 

then I saw, what I had before suspected, that 
modern glaciers, like modern rivers, were 
not cutting their beds deeper but filling 
them up. — These, then, are the two facts I 
wish to lay distinctly before you — first that 
glaciers are fluent: and secondly, that they 
are filling up their beds, not cutting them 

deeper. —Deucalion, Chap. Ill, pp. 28, 30. 

Sculpture by streams, or by gradual 
weathering, is the finishing work by which 
Nature brings her mountain forms into the 
state in which she intends us generally to 
observe and love them. The violent con- 
vulsion or disruption by which she first 
raises and separates the masses, may fre- 
quently be intended to produce impressions 
of terror rather than of beauty : but the laws 
which are in constant operation on all noble 
and enduring scenery must assuredly be in- 
tended to produce results grateful to men. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XVII, p. 327. 

One of the principal charms of mountain 
scenery is its solitude . . . another feeling 
with which one is impressed during a moun- 
tain ramble is humility. 

— Poetry of Architecture, pp. 34, 35. 



206 NATURE STUDIES, 

It makes no difference to some men 
whether a natural object be large or small, 
whether it be strong or feeble. But loveli- 
ness of color, perfectness of form, endlessness 
of change, wonderfulness of structure, are 
precious to all undiseased human minds; 
and the superiority of the mountains in these 
things to the lowland is, I repeat, as measur- 
able as the richness of a painted window 
matched with a white one, or the wealth of 
a museum compared with that of a simply 
furnished chamber. They seem to have 
been built for the human race, as at once 
their schools and cathedrals : full of treasures 
of illuminated manuscript for the scholar, 
kindly in simple lessons to the worker, quiet 
in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in 
holiness for the worshipper. And of these 
great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates 
of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream 
and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of 
purple traversed by the continual stars, — 
of these, — it was written not long ago, by 
one of the best of the poor human race for 
whom they were built, wondering in himself 
for whom their Creator could have made 
them, and thinking to have entirely dis- 
cerned the Divine intent in them — "They 
are inhabited by the Beasts" — 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM, 207 

Was it then indeed thus with us, and so 
lately? Had mankind offered no worship 
in their mountain churches ? Was all that 
granite sculpture and floral painting done by 
the angels in vain ? 

Not so. It will need no prolonged thought 
to convince us that in the hills the purposes of 
their Maker have indeed been accomplished 
in such measure as, through the sin or folly 
of men, He ever permits them to be accom- 
plished. It may not seem, from the general 
language held concerning them, or from any 
direct traceable results, that mountains have 
had serious influence on human intellect: 
but it will not, I think, be difficult to show 
that their occult influence has been both 
constant and essential to the progress of the 
race. Consider, first, whether we can justly 
refuse to attribute to their mountain scenery 
some share in giving the Greeks and Italians 
their intellectual lead among the nations of 
Europe. There is not a single spot of land 
in either of these countries from which 
mountains are not discernible: almost always 
they form the principal feature of the scenery. 
. . . Nor would it be difficult to show that 
every great writer of either of those nations, 
however little definite regard he might mani- 
fest for the landscape of his country, has 



2 o8 NATURE STUDIES. 

been mentally formed and disciplined by it, 
so that even such enjoyment as Homer's of 
the ploughed ground and popular groves 
owes its intensity and delicacy to the excite- 
ment of the imagination produced without 
his own consciousness, by other and grander 
features of the scenery to which he had been 
accustomed from a child. 

. . . Mountains have always possessed the 
power, first, of exciting religious enthusiasm : 
secondly, of purifying religious faith. These 
two operations are partly contrary to one 
another : for the faith of enthusiasm is apt to 
be z/^pure; and the mountains, by exciting 
morbid conditions of the imagination, have 
caused in great part the legendary and 
romantic form of belief; on the other hand, 
by fostering simplicity of life and dignity 
of morals, they have purified by action what 
they falsified by imagination. But, even in 
their first and most dangerous influence, it 
is not the mountains that are to blame, but 
the human heart. While we mourn over the 
fictitious shape given to the religious visions 
of the anchorite, we may envy the sin- 
cerity and the depth of the emotion from 
which they spring; in the deep feeling, we 
have to acknowledge the solemn influences 
of the hills : but for the erring modes or 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 209 

forms of thought, it is human wilfulness, sin 
and false teaching that are answerable. . . . 

. . . And, in fact, much of the apparently 
harmful influence of hills on the religion of 
the world is nothing else than their general 
gift of exciting the poetical and inventive 
faculties, in peculiarly solemn tones of mind. 
Their terror leads into devotional casts of 
thought: their beauty and wildness prompt 
the invention at the same time ; and where 
the mind is not gifted with stern reasoning 
powers, or protected by purity of teaching, 
it is sure to mingle the invention with its 
creed and the vision with its prayer. Strictly 
speaking, we ought to consider the super- 
stitions of the hills, universally, as a form of 
poetry; regretting only that men have not 
yet learned how to distinguish poetry from 
well-founded faith. . . . 

. . . Mark the significance of the earliest 
mention of mountains in the Mosaic books ; 
at least of those in which some Divine ap- 
pointment or command is stated respecting 
them. They are first brought before us as 
refuges for God's people from the two judg- 
ments of water and fire. The ark rests upon 
the " mountains of Ararat " : and man, hav- 
ing passed through that great baptism unto 
death, kneels upon the earth first where it 



2io NATURE STUDIES. 

is nearest heaven, and mingles with the 
mountain clouds the smoke of his sacrifice 
of thanksgiving. Again: from the midst of 
the first judgment by fire, the command 
of the Deity to His servant is, " Escape to 
the mountain.". . . 

The third mention, in way of ordinance, 
is a far more solemn one : " Abraham lifted 
up his eyes, and saw the place afar off." 
"The Place," the Mountain of Myrrh, or of 
bitterness chosen to fulfil to all the seed of 
Abraham, far off and near, the inner mean- 
ing of promise regarded in that vow : " I 
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from 
whence cometh mine help." And the fourth, 
is the delivery of the law on Sinai. 

It seemed, then, to the monks, that the 
mountains were appointed by their Maker 
to be to man, refuges from Judgments, signs 
of Redemption, and altars of Sanctification 
and obedience; and they saw them after- 
wards connected, in the manner the most 
touching and gracious, with the death, after 
his task had been accomplished, of the first 
anointed Priest: the death in like manner, 
of the first inspired Lawgiver; and, lastly, 
with the assumption of His office by the 
Eternal Priest, Lawgiver, and Saviour. 
Observe the connection of these three 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 211 

events . . . Try to realize that going forth 
of Aaron from the midst of the congrega- 
tion. . . . Try if you cannot walk, in thought, 
with those two brothers, and the son, as 
they passed the outmost tents of Israel, and 
turned, while yet the dew lay round about 
the camp, towards the slopes of Mount Hor ; 
talking together for the last time, as step by 
step, they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, 
and hour after hour, beneath the ascend- 
ing sun, the horizon grew broader as they 
climbed, and all the folded hills of Idumea, 
one by one subdued, showed amidst their 
hollows in the haze of noon, the winding 
of that long desert journey, now at last 
to close. But who shall enter into the 
thoughts of the High Priest, as his eyes 
followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage ; 
and through the silence of the arid and 
endless hills, stretching even to the dim 
peak of Sinai, the whole history of those 
forty years was unfolded before him, and 
the mystery of his own ministries revealed 
to him ; and that other Holy of Holies, of 
which the mountain peaks were the altars, 
and the mountain clouds the veil, the fir- 
mament of his Father's dwelling, opened to 
him still more brighter and infinitely as he 
drew nearer his death : until at last, on the 



212 NATURE STUDIES. 

shadeless summit — from him on whom sin 
was to be laid no more — from him, on 
whose heart the names of sinful nations 
were to press their graven fire no longer, — 
the brother and the son took breastplate 
and ephod, and left him to his rest. 

There is indeed a secretness in this calm 
faith and deep restraint of sorrow, into which 
it is difficult for us to enter : but the death of 
Moses himself is more easily to be conceived: 
and had in it circumstances still more touch- 
ing, as far as regards the influence of the 
external scene. For forty years Moses had 
not been alone. The care and burden of all 
the people, the weight of their woe and 
guilt, and death, had been upon him con- 
tinually . . . and now, at last, the command 
came," Get thee up into this mountain." The 
weary hands that had been so long stayed 
up against the enemies of Israel, might lean 
again upon the Shepherd's staff, and fold 
themselves for the Shepherd's prayer — for 
the Shepherd's slumber. Not strange to his 
feet, though forty years unknown, the rough- 
ness of the bare mountain-path, as he 
climbed from ledge to ledge of Abarim : 
not strange to his aged eyes the scattered 
clusters of the mountain herbage, and the 
broken shadows of the cliffs, indented far 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 213 

across the silence of the uninhabited ravines : 
scenes such as those among which, with 
none, as now, beside him but God, he had 
led his flocks so often; and which he had 
left, how painfully! taking upon him the 
appointed power, to make of the fenced city 
a wilderness, and to fill the desert with songs 
of deliverance. It was not to embitter the 
last hours of his life that God restored to 
him, for a day, the beloved solitudes he had 
lost : and breathed the peace of the perpetual 
hills around him, and cast the world in which 
he had labored and sinned far beneath his 
feet, in that mist of dying blue; — all sin, 
all wandering, soon to be forgotten forever : 
the Dead Sea — a type of God's anger 
understood by him, of all men, most clearly, 
who had seen the earth open her mouth, and 
the sea his depth, to overwhelm the com- 
panies of those who contended with his 
Master — lay waveless beneath him: and 
beyond it, the fair hills of Judah, and the 
soft plains and banks of Jordan, purple in 
the evening light as with the blood of 
redemption, and fading in their distant ful- 
ness into mysteries of promise and love. 
There, with his unabated strength, his un- 
dimmed glance, lying down upon the utmost 
rocks, with angels waiting near to contend 



2i4 NATURE STUDIES. 

for the spoils of his spirit, he put off his 
earthly armor. We do deep reverence to his 
companion prophet, for whom the chariot of 
fire came down from heaven: but was his 
death less noble, whom his Lord Himself 
buried in the vales of Moab, keeping, in the 
secrets of the eternal counsels, the knowl- 
edge of a sepulchre, from which he was to 
be called, in the fulness of time, to talk with 
that Lord, upon Hermon, of the death that 
He should accomplish at Jerusalem ? 

And lastly, let us turn our thoughts for 
a few moments to the cause of the resurrec- 
tion of these two prophets. . . . Consider, 
therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to 
the human feelings of our Lord. It was the 
first definite preparation for His death. He 
had foretold it to His disciples six days 
before; then takes with Him the three 
chosen ones into " an high mountain apart." 
From an exceeding high mountain, at the 
first taking on Him the ministry of life, He 
had beheld, and rejected the kingdoms of 
the earth, and their glory : now on a high 
mountain, He takes upon Him the ministry 
of death. 

. . . The tradition is, that the Mount of 
Transfiguration was the summit of Tabor: 
but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 215 

was it in any sense a mountain "apart"; 
being in those years both inhabited and 
fortified. All the immediately preceding 
ministries of Christ had been at Cesarea 
Philippi. There is no mention of travel 
southward in the six days that intervened 
between the warning given to His disciples, 
and the going up into the hill. What other 
hill could it be than the southward slope 
of that goodly mountain, Hermon; — the 
mount of fruitfulness, from which the 
springs of Jordan descended to the valleys 
of Israel. 

Along its mighty forest avenues, until 
the grass grew fair with the mountain lilies, 
His feet dashed in the dew of Hermon, He 
must have gone to pray His first recorded 
prayer about death. ..." And as He prayed, 
two men stood by Him." . . . One, from that 
tomb under Abarim which His own hand 
had sealed so long ago ; the other from the 
rest into which he had entered without see- 
ing corruption. There stood by Him Moses 
and Elias, and spake of His decease. 
Then, when the prayer is ended, the task 
accepted, first, since the star paused over 
Him at Bethlehem, the full glory falls upon 
Him from heaven, and the testimony is 
borne to His everlasting Sonship and power. 



216 NATURE STUDIES. 

" Hear ye Him." If, in their remembrance 
of these things, and if in their endeavor 
to follow in the footsteps of their Master, 
religious men of by-gone days, closing them- 
selves in the hill solitudes, forgot sometimes, 
and sometimes feared, the duties they owed 
to the active world, we may perhaps par- 
don them more easily than we ought to 
pardon ourselves, if we neither seek any 
influence for good nor submit to it un- 
sought, in scenes to which thus all the men 
whose writings we receive as inspired, to- 
gether with their Lord, retired whenever 
they had any task or trial laid upon them 
needing more than their usual strength of 
spirit. Nor, perhaps, should we have un- 
profitably entered into the mind of the 
earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, 
as we watch the chains of the snowy moun- 
tains rise on the horizon, we should some- 
times admit the memory of the hour in 
which their Creator, among their solitudes, 
entered on His travail for the salvation 
of our race; and indulge the dream, that 
as the flaming and trembling mountains 
of the earth seem to be the monuments of 
the manifesting of His terror on Sinai, — 
these pure and white hills, near to the 
heaven, and sources of all good to the 



THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM, 217 

earth, are the appointed memorials of that 
Light of His Mercy, that fell, snow-like, on 
the Mount of Transfiguration. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XX, pp. 432-473. 



ABOUT WATER. 



Murmuring voices melt along the shore : 
The plash of waves comes softly. . . . 

Poems, p. 183 — Saltzburg I, 

The great Rivers that move like His eternity. 
— Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part III, Sect. I, Chap. I, p. 222. 



VII. 

ABOUT WATER. 

Of all inorganic substances, acting in their 
own proper nature, and without assistance or 
combination, water is the most wonderful. 
If we think of it as the source of all the 
changefulness and beauty which we have 
seen in clouds: then as the instrument by 
which the earth we have contemplated 
was modelled into symmetry, and its crags 
chiselled into grace ; then as, in the form of 
snow, it robes the mountains it has made, 
with that transcendent light which we could 
not have conceived if we had not seen ; then 
as it exists in the form of the torrent — in 
the iris which spans it, in the morning mist 
which rises from it, in the deep crystalline 
pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the 
broad lake and glancing river: finally, in 
that which is to all human minds the best 
emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, 
the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity 
of the sea; what shall we compare to this 
mighty, this universal element, for glory, and 
for beauty? or how shall we follow its eternal 
changefulness of feeling? It is like trying 
to paint a soul. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. I, p. 92. 



222 NATURE STUDIES. 

Every fountain and river, from the inch- 
deep streamlet that crosses the village lane in 
trembling clearness, to the massy and silent 
march of the everlasting multitude of waters 
in Amazon or Ganges, owe their play, and 
purity, and power, to the ordained elevations 
of the Earth. Gentle or steep, extended or 
abrupt, some determined slope of the earth's 
surface is of course necessary, before any 
wave can so much as overtake one sedge 
in its pilgrimage; and how seldom do we 
enough consider, as we walk beside the 
margins of our pleasant brooks, how beauti- 
ful and wonderful is that ordinance, of which 
every blade of grass that waves in their clear 
water is a perpetual sign : that the dew and 
rain fallen on the face of the earth shall find 
no resting-place : shall find, on the contrary, 
fixed channels traced for them, from the 
ravines of the central crests down which they 
roar in sudden ranks of foam, to the dark 
hollows beneath the banks of lowland pas- 
tures, round which they must circle slowly 
among the stems and beneath the leaves of 
the lilies : paths prepared for them, by which, 
at some appointed rate of journey, they must 
evermore descend, sometimes slow and some- 
times swift, but never pausing: the daily 
portion of the earth they have to glide over 



ABOUT WATER. 223 

marked for them at each successive sunrise, 
the place which has known them knowing 
them no more, and the gateways of guarding 
mountains opened for them in cleft and 
chasm, none letting them in their pilgrim- 
age : and, from far off, the great heart of the 
sea calling them to itself! Deep calleth 
unto deep. I know not which of the two 
is the more wonderful, — that calm, gradated, 
invisible slope of the champaign land, which 
gives motion to the stream : or that passage 
cloven for it through the ranks of hill, which, 
necessary for the health of the land imme- 
diately around them, would yet, unless so 
supernaturally divided, have fatally inter- 
cepted the flow of the waters from far-off 
countries. When did the great spirit of 
the river first knock at those adamantine 
gates ? When did the porter open to it, and 
cast his keys away forever, lapped in whirl- 
ing sand? I am not satisfied — no one 
should be satisfied — with that vague answer, 
— the river cut its way. Not so. The river 
found its way. I do not see that rivers, 
in their own strength, can do much in cut- 
ting their way; they are nearly as apt to choke 
their channels up, as to carve them out. 
Only give a river some little sudden power 
in a valley, and see how it will use it. Cut 



224 NATURE STUDIES. 

itself a bed ? Not so, by any means, but fill 
up its bed, and look for another, in a wild, 
dissatisfied, inconsistent manner. Any way, 
rather than the old one, will better please it ; 
and even if it is banked up and forced to 
keep to the old one, it will not deepen, but 
do all it can to raise it, and leap out of it. 
And although, wherever water has a steep 
fall, it will swiftly cut itself a bed deep into 
the rock or ground, it will not, when the 
rock is hard, cut a wider channel than it 
actually needs ; so that if the existing river 
beds, through ranges of mountain, had in 
reality been cut by the streams, they would 
be found, wherever the rocks are hard, only in 
the form of narrow and profound ravines — 
like the well-known channel of the Niagara, 
below the fall; not in that of extended 

Valleys. — In Moniibus Sanctis, Chap. II, pp. 133, 134. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Chap. VII. 

The sources of a river are usually half lost 
among moss and pebbles, and its first move- 
ments doubtful in direction : but, as the cur- 
rent gathers force, its banks are determined, 
and its branches are numbered. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. VI, p. 77. 

It is strange how seldom rivers have been 
named from their depth. Mostly they take 



ABOUT WATER. 225 

at once some dear, companionable name; 
and become gods, or at least living creat- 
ures, to their refreshed people; if not thus 
Pagan-named, they are noted by their color, 
or their purity, — White River, Black River, 
Rio Verde, Aqua Dolce, Fiume di Latte; 
but scarcely ever, Deep River. 

— St. Mark's Rest, Chap. Ill, p. 30. 

All rivers, small or large, agree in one 
character, they like to lean a little on one 
side: they cannot bear to have their chan- 
nels deepest in the middle, but will always, 
if they can, have one bank to sun them- 
selves upon, and another to get cool under ; 
one shingly shore to play over, where they 
may be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, 
and another steep shore, under which they 
can pause, and purify themselves, and get 
their strength of waves fully together for 
due occasion. Rivers in this way are just 
like wise men, who keep one side of their 
life for play, and another for work: and 
can be brilliant, and chattering, and trans- 
parent, when they are at ease, and yet take 
deep counsel on the other side when they 
set themselves to the main purpose. And 
rivers are just in this divided, also, like 
wicked and good men; the good rivers 



226 NATURE STUDIES. 

have serviceable deep places all along their 
banks, that ships can sail in ; but the wicked 
rivers go scooping by irregularly under their 
banks until they get full of strangling 
eddies, which no boat can row over with- 
out being twisted against the rocks; and 
pools like wells, which no one can get out 
of but the water-kelpie that lives at the 
bottom: but wicked or good, the rivers all 
agree in having two kinds of sides. 

— The Elements of Drawings Letter III, pp. 365, 366. 

The Tweed — a beautiful river, flowing 
broad and bright over a bed of milk-white 
pebbles, unless where, here and there, it 
darkened into a deep pool, overhung by 
the birches and alders which had survived 
the statelier growth of the primitive for- 
ests. . . . With the murmur, whisper and 
low fall of these streamlets, unmatched 
for mystery and sweetness, we must re- 
member also the variable, but seldom wild, 
thrilling of the wind among the recesses 
of the glens. . . . 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. II, Letter XXXII, p. 50. 

The far away edge of . . . ocean, where 
the surf and the sandbank are mingled 

with the Sky. — Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. I, p. 8. 



ABOUT WATER. 



227 



On the other side of the high town 
(Geneva) the houses stand closer, leaving 
yet space for a little sycamore-shaded walk, 
whence one looks down on the whole 
southern reach of Lake, opening wide to 
the horizon, and edged there like the sea, 
but in the summer sunshine looking as if 
it was tlie one well of blue which the sun- 
beams drank to make the sky of . . . This 
was the view for full noon when the Lake 
was brightest and bluest. . . . 

. . . For all other rivers there is a surface, 
with an underneath, and a vaguely displeas- 
ing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone 
flows like one lambent jewel ; its surface is 
nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the 
iridescent rush and translucent strength of 
it blue to the shore, and radiant to the 
depth. 

Fifteen feet thick, of not flowing, but 
flying water; not water, neither, — melted 
glacier, rather, one should call it ; the force 
of the ice is with it, and the wreathing of 
the clouds, the gladness of the sky, and the 
continuance of Time. 

Waves of clear sea, are, indeed, lovely to 
watch, but they are always coming or gone, 
never in any taken shape to be seen for a 
second. But here was one mighty wave 



228 NATURE STUDIES. 

that was always itself, and every fluted swirl 
of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell. 
No wasting away of the fallen foam, no 
pause for gathering of power, no helpless ebb 
of discouraged recoil: but alike through 
bright day and lulling night, the never- 
pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and 
never-hushing whisper, and, while the sun 
was up, the ever-answering glow of un- 
earthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet-blue, 
gentian-blue, peacock-blue, river-of-paradise 
blue, glass of a painted window melted in 
the sun, and the witch of the Alps flinging 
the spun tresses of it forever from her snow. 
The innocent way, too, in which the river 
used to stop to look into every little corner. 
Great torrents always seem angry, and 
great rivers too often sullen; but there is 
no anger, no disdain in the Rhone. It 
seemed as if the mountain stream was in 
mere bliss at recovering itself again out of 
the lake-sleep, and raced because it rejoiced 
in racing, fain yet to return and stay. There 
were pieces of wave that danced all day as 
if Perdita were looking on to learn : there 
were little streams that skipped like lambs 
and leaped like chamois, there were pools 
that shook the sunshine all through them, 
and were rippled in layers of overlaid ripples, 



ABOUT WATER, 229 

like crystal sand, there were currents that 
twisted the light into golden braids, and 
inlaid the threads with turquoise enamel: 
there were strips of stream that had certainly 
above the lake been mill-streams, and were 
looking busily for mills to turn again ; there 
were shoots of stream that had once shot 
fearfully into the air, and now sprang up 
again laughing that they had only fallen a 
foot or two; — and in the midst of all the 
gay glittering and eddied lingering, the noble 
bearing by of the midmost depth, so mighty, 
yet so terrorless and harmless, with its swal- 
lows skimming, instead of petrels, and the 
dear old decrepit town as safe in the em- 
bracing sweep of it, as if it were set in a 
brooch of sapphire. 

— Praterita, Vol. II, Chap. V, pp. 260-263. 

All plains capable of cultivation are de- 
posits from some kind of water — some from 
swift and tremendous currents, leaving their 
soil in sweeping banks and furrowed ridges 
— others, and this is in mountain districts 
almost invariably the case, by slow deposit 
from a quiet lake in the mountain hollow, 
which has been gradually filled by the soil 
carried into it by streams, which soil is of 
course finally left spread at the exact level 



230 NATURE STUDIES. 

of the surface of the former lake, as level as 
the quiet water itself. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. I, p. 28. 

Few people, comparatively, have ever 
seen the effect on the sea of a powerful 
gale continued without intermission for 
three or four days and nights, and to those 
who have not, I believe it must be unimag- 
inable, not from the mere force or size of 
surge, but from the complete annihilation 
of the limit between sea and air. The 
water from its prolonged agitation is beaten, 
not into mere creaming foam, but into 
masses of accumulated yeast, which hang 
in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, 
and where one curls over to break, form a 
festoon like a drapery, from its edge : these 
are taken up by the wind, not in dissipat- 
ing dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, 
coiling masses, which make the air white 
and thick as with snow, only the flakes 
are a foot or two long each : the surges 
themselves are full of foam in their very 
bodies, underneath, making them white all 
through, as the water is under a great cata- 
ract; and their masses, being thus half 
water and half air, are torn to pieces by 
the wind whenever they rise, and carried 



ABOUT WATER. 231 

away in roaring smoke, which chokes and 
strangles like actual water. Add to this, 
that when the air has been exhausted of its 
moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea 
is caught by it and covers its surface not 
merely with the smoke of finely divided 
water, but with boiling mist; imagine 
also the low rain-clouds brought down to 
the very level of the sea, as I have often 
seen them, whirling and flying in rags and 
fragments from wave to wave; and finally, 
conceive the surges themselves in their ut- 
most pitch of power, velocity, vastness and 
madness, lifting themselves in precipices 
and peaks, furrowed with the whirl of as- 
cent, through all this chaos; and you will 
understand that there is indeed no dis- 
tinction left between the sea and air, that 
no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark 
or natural evidence of position is left: that 
the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all 
cloud, and that you can see no farther in 
any direction than you could see through 
a cataract. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. Ill, 
pp. 159, 160. 

Let the reader note that the beryl-co\oxz& 
water of the Lake of Zurich and the Lim- 
mat gave, in old days, the perfectest type 



2 3 2 NATURE STUDIES. 

of purity, of all the Alpine streams. The 
deeper blue of the Reuss and Rhone 
grew dark at less depth, and always gave 
some idea of the presence of a mineral 
element, causing the color; while the Aar 
had soiled itself with clay even before 
reaching Berne. But the pale aquamarine 
crystal of the Lake of Zurich, with the fish 
set in it, some score of them — small and 
great — to a cube fathom, and the rapid 
fall and stainless ripple of the Limmat, 
through the whole of its course under the 
rocks of Baden to the Reuss, remained, 
summer and winter, of a constant, sacred, 
inviolable, super-natural loveliness. 

— Prceteritd) Vol. Ill, Chap. II, p. 415. 

Scottish streams — I know no other waters 
to be compared with them ; — such streams 
can only exist under very subtle concur- 
rence of rock and climate. There must 
be much soft rain, not (habitually) tearing 
the hills down with floods ; and the rocks 
must break irregularly and jaggedly. 

. . . Farther, the loosely-breaking rock 
must contain hard pebbles, to give the 
level shore of white shingle through which 
the brown water may stray wide, in rippling 
threads. . . . The fords even of English 



ABOUT WATER, 233 

rivers have given the names to half our 
prettiest towns and villages: — but the 
pure crystal of the Scottish pebbles, giv- 
ing the stream its gradations of amber 
to the edge, and the sound as of " ravishing 
division to the lute," make the Scottish 
fords the happiest pieces of all one's day 
walk. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. II, Letter XXXII, p. 49. 

Let us go down and stand by the beach — 
of the great irregular sea, and count whether 
the thunder of it is not out of time. One, — 
two: — here comes a well-formed wave at 
last, trembling a little at the top, but, on the 
whole, orderly. So, crash among the shingle, 
and up as far as this gray pebble : now stand 
by and watch! Another: — Ah, careless 
wave! Why couldn't you have kept your 
crest on? it is all gone away into spray, 
striking up against the cliffs there — I 
thought as much — missed the mark by a 
couple of feet! Another: — How now, im- 
patient one! couldn't you have waited till 
your friends reflux was done with, instead 
of rolling yourself up with it in that unseemly 
manner? You go for nothing. A fourth, 
and a goodly one at last. What think we 
of yonder slow rise, and crystalline hollow, 



234 NATURE STUDIES. 

without a flaw? Steady, good wave; not so 
fast ; not so fast ; where are you coming to? — 
By our architectural word, this is too bad; 
two yards over the mark, and ever so much 
of you in our face besides ; and a wave which 
we had some hope of, behind there, broken 
all to pieces out at sea, and laying a great 
white table-cloth of foam all the way to the 
shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off 
it ! Alas, for these unhappy arrow shots of 
Nature; she will never hit her mark with 
those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of 
them into the ideal shape, if we wait for a 
thousand years. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXX, p. 343. 

Most people think of waves as rising and 
falling. But if they look at the sea carefully, 
they will perceive that waves do not rise and 
fall. They change. Change both place and 
form, but they do not fall ; one wave goes on, 
and on, and still on ; now lower, now higher, 
now tossing its mane like a horse, now build- 
ing itself together like a wall, now shaking, 
now steady, but still the same wave, till 
at last it seems struck by something, and 
changes, one knows not how, becomes 
another wave. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XII, p. 211. 



ABOUT WATER. 235 

There is a sublimity and majesty in 
monotony which there is not in rapid or 
frequent variation. This is true throughout 
all Nature. The greater part of the sub- 
limity of the sea depends on its monotony. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. VI, p. 177. 

It is a little valley of soft turf enclosed in 
its narrow oval, by jutting rocks and broad 
flakes of nodding fern. From one side of it 
to the other winds, serpentine, a clear brown 
stream, dropping into quicker ripple as it 
reaches the end of the oval field, and then, 
first islanding a purple and white rock with 
an amber pool, it dashes away into a narrow 
fall of foam under a thicket of mountain ash 
and alder. The autumn sun, low but clear, 
shines on the scarlet ash-berries, and on the 
golden birch-leaves, which, fallen here and 
there, when the breeze has not caught 
them, rest quiet in the crannies of the purple 

rOCk. — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. II, p. 264. 

Stand for half an hour beside the fall of 
Schaffhausen, or the north side where the 
rapids are long, and watch how the vault of 
water first bends, unbroken, in pure, polished 
velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow 
of the cataract, covering them with a dome 



236 NATURE STUDIES. 

of crystal twenty feet thick — so swift that its 
motion is unseen except when a foam globe 
from above darts over it like a falling star; 
and how the trees are lighted above it under 
all their leaves, at the instant that it breaks 
into foam ; and how all the hollows of that 
foam burn with green fire like so much shat- 
tering chrysoprase ; and how, ever and anon, 
startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray 
leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, burst- 
ing in the wind and driven away in dust, fill- 
ing the air with light ; and how, through the 
curdling wreaths of the restless, crashing 
abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by 
the foam in its body, shows purer than the 
sky through white rain-cloud ; while the shud- 
dering iris stoops in tremulous stillness over 
all, fading and flushing alternately through 
the choking spray and shattered sunshine, 
hiding itself at last among the thick golden 
leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with 
the wild water ; their dripping masses lifted 
at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by 
some stronger gush from the cataract, and 
bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar 
dies away ; the dew gushing from their thick 
branches through drooping clusters of emer- 
ald herbage, and sparkling in white threads 
along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding 



ABOUT WATER, 237 

the lichens which chase and checker them 
with purple and silver. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. II, p. 121. 

Whenever a nation is in its right mind, 
it always has a deep sense of divinity in the 
gift of rain from heaven, filling its heart with 
food and gladness ; and all the more when 
that gift becomes gentle and perennial in the 

flowing Of Springs. — Lecture on Art, Lecture IV, p. 268. 

When water, not in very great body, runs 
in a rocky bed much interrupted by hollows, 
so that it can rest every now and then in a 
pool as it goes along, it does not acquire 
a continuous velocity of motion. It pauses 
after every leap, and curdles about, and rests 
a little, and then goes on again : and if in this 
comparatively tranquil and rational state of 
mind it meets with an obstacle, as a rock or 
stone, it parts on each side of it with a little 
bubbling foam, and goes around; if it comes 
to a step in its bed, it leaps it lightly, and 
then after a little plashing at the bottom, 
stops again to take breath. But if its bed be 
on a continuous slope, not much interrupted 
by hollows, so that it cannot rest, or if its own 
mass be so increased by flood that its usual 
resting-places are not sufficient for it, but 



238 NATURE STUDIES. 

that it is perpetually pushed out of them by 
the following current, before it has had time 
to tranquillize itself, it of course gains veloc- 
ity with every yard that it runs; the impetus 
got at one leap is carried to the credit of 
the next, until the whole stream becomes 
one mass of unchecked, accelerating motion. 
Now when water in this state comes to an 
obstacle, it does not part at it, but clears it 
like a race-horse; and when it comes to a 
hollow, it does not fill it up and run out 
leisurely at the other side, but it rushes down 
into it and comes up again on the other side, 
as a ship into the hollow of the sea. Hence 
the whole appearance of the bed of the stream 
is changed, and all the lines of the water 
altered in their nature. The quiet stream is 
a succession of leaps and pools, the leaps are 
light and springy, and parabolic, and make 
a great deal of splashing when they tumble 
into the pool : then we have a space of quiet 
curdling water, and another similar leap 
below. But the stream, when it has gained 
an impetus takes the shape of its bed, never 
stops, is equally deep and equally swift every- 
where, goes down into every hollow, not with 
a leap, but with a swing, not foaming, nor 
splashing, but in the bending line of a strong 
sea-wave, and comes up again on the other 
side over rock and ridge, with the ease of a 



ABOUT WATER, 239 

bounding leopard ; if it meet a rock three 
or four feet above the level of its bed, it will 
neither part nor foam, nor express any con- 
cern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth 
dome of water, without apparent exertion, 
coming down again as smoothly on the other 
side; the whole surface of the surge being 
drawn down into parallel lines by its extreme 
velocity, but foamless, except in places where 
the form of the bed opposes itself at some 
direct angle to such a line of fall, and causes 
a breaker; so that the whole river has the 
appearance of a deep and raging sea, with 
this only difference, that the torrent-waves 
always break backwards, and sea-waves for- 
wards. Thus, then, in the water which has 
gained an impetus, . we have the most ex- 
quisite arrangements of curved lines, perpetu- 
ally changing from convex to concave, and 
vice versa following every swell and hollow 
of the bed with their modulating grace, and 
all in unison of motion, presenting perhaps 
the most beautiful series of inorganic forms 
which Nature can possibly produce ; for the 
sea runs too much into similar and concave 
curves with sharp edges, but every motion 
of the torrent is united, and all its curves are 
modifications of beautiful life. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. Ill, 
pp. 145, 146. 



2 4 o NATURE STUDIES. 

You recollect Kingsley's expression — the 
"crawling foam" of waves advancing on 
sand. Tennyson has somewhere also used 
with equal truth, the epithet, "climbing" 
of the spray of breakers against vertical 
rock. In either instance, the sea action is 
literally " rampant " : and the course of a 
great breaker, whether in its first proud 
likeness to a rearing horse, or in the humble 
and subdued gaining of the outmost verge 
of its foam on the sand, or the intermediate 
spiral whorl which gathers into lustrous 
precision, like that of a polished shell, the 
grasping force of a giant, you have the most 
vivid sight and embodiment of literally ram- 
pant energy. — ValD'Arno, Lecture VII, p. 318. 

Reflections in Water: Let us stand on 
the sea-shore on a cloudless night, with a full 
moon over the sea, and a swell on the water. 
Of course a long line of splendor will be 
seen on the waves under the moon, reaching 
from the horizon to our very feet. But are 
those waves between the moon and us actu- 
ally more illuminated than any other part of 
the sea ? Not one whit. The whole surface 
of the sea is under the same full light, but 
the waves between the moon and us are the 
only ones which are in a position to reflect 



ABOUT WATER. 241 

that light to our eyes. The sea on both 
sides of that path of light is in perfect dark- 
ness — almost black. But is it so from 
shadow ? Not so, for there is nothing to 
intercept the moonlight from it; it is so 
from position, because it cannot reflect any 
of the rays which fall on it to our eyes, but 
reflects instead the dark vault of the night 
sky. Both the darkness and the light on 
it, therefore — and they are as violently con- 
trasted as well may be — are nothing but 
reflections, the whole surface of the water 
being under one blaze of moonlight, entirely 
unshaded by any intervening object what- 
soever. 

Now, then, we can understand the cause 
of chiaro-scuro of the sea by daylight with 
lateral sun. Where the sunlight reaches 
the water, every ripple, wave, or swell reflects 
to the eye from some of its planes either the 
image of the sun or some portion of the 
neighboring bright sky. Where the cloud in- 
terposes between the sun and sea, all these 
luminous reflections are prevented, and 
the raised planes of the waves reflect only 
the dark under-surface of the cloud ; and 
hence, by the multiplication of the images, 
spaces of light and shade are produced, which 
lie on the sea precisely in the position of real 



2 42 NATURE STUDIES. 

or positive lights and shadows — correspond- 
ing to the outlines of the clouds — laterally 
cast, and therefore seen in addition to, and 
at the same time with, the ordinary or direct 
reflection, vigorously contrasted, the lights 
being often a blaze of gold, and the shadows 
a dark leaden gray; and yet, they are no 
more real lights, or real shadows, on the sea, 
than the image of a black coat is a shadow 
on a mirror, or the image of white paper a 
light upon it. 

Are there, then, no shadows whatsoever 
upon the sea? Not so. My assertion is 
simply that there are none on clear water 
near the eye. I shall briefly state a few of 
the circumstances which give rise to real 
shadow in a distant effect. 

Any admixture of opaque coloring matter, 
as of mud, chalk, or powdered granite ren- 
ders water capable of distinct shadow, which 
is cast on the earthly and solid particles sus- 
pended in the liquid. . . . 

There is, however, a peculiarity in the 
appearance of such shadows which require 
especial notice. It is not merely the trans- 
parency of water, but its polished surface, 
and consequent reflective power, which 
render it incapable of shadow. A perfectly 
opaque body, if its power of reflection be 



ABOUT WATER. 243 

perfect, receives no shadow, and therefore, 
in any lustrous body, the incapability of 
shadow is in proportion to the power of re- 
flection. Now the power of reflection in 
water varies with the angle of the impinging 
ray, being of course greatest when that angle 
is least ; and thus, when we look along the 
water at a low angle, its power of reflection 
maintains its incapability of shadow to a 
considerable extent, in spite of its containing 
suspended opaque matter; whereas, when 
we look down upon water from a height, as 
we then receive from it only rays which have 
fallen on it at a large angle, a great number 
of those rays are reflected from the surface, 
but penetrate beneath the surface, and are 
then reflected from the suspended opaque 
matter: thus rendering shadows clearly 
visible which, at a small angle, would have 
been altogether unperceived. 

But it is not merely the presence of opaque 
matter which renders shadows visible on the 
sea, from a height. The eye, when elevated 
above the water, receives rays reflected from 
the bottom, of which, when near the water, 
it is insensible. 

The actual color of the sea itself is 
an important cause of shadow in distant 
effect. . . . 



244 NATURE STUDIES. 

. . . The sea under shade is commonly of 
a cold gray hue; in the sunlight it is sus- 
ceptible of vivid and exquisite coloring : and 
thus the forms of clouds are traced on its 
surface, not by light and shade, but by vari- 
ation of color by grays opposed to greens, 
blues to rose-tints, etc. All such phenom- 
ena are chiefly visible from a height and a 
distance. Local color is, however, the cause 
of one beautiful kind of chiaro-scuro, visible 
when we are close to the water — shadows 
cast, not on the waves, but through them, as 
through misty air. 

— Arrows of the Ckace t Vo\ % I, Miscellaneous Letter II, pp. 188, 190. 

Water, of course, owing to its trans- 
parency, possesses not a perfectly reflective 
surface, like that of speculum metal, but a sur- 
face whose reflective power is dependent on 
the angle at which the rays to be reflected 
fall. The smaller this angle, the greater 
are the number of rays reflected. Now, 
according to the number of rays reflected 
is the force of the image of objects above, 
and according to the number of rays trans- 
mitted is the perceptibility of objects below 
the water. Hence the visible transparency 
and reflective power of water are in inverse 
ratio. . . . 



ABOUT WATER. 245 

It will be found on observation that under 
a bank — suppose with dark trees above 
showing spaces of bright sky, the bright sky 
is reflected distinctly, and the bottom of the 
water is in those spaces not seen : but in the 
dark spaces of reflection we see the bottom 
of the water, and the color of that bottom 
and of the water itself mingles with and 
modifies that of the color of the trees casting 
the dark reflection. 

This is one of the most beautiful circum- 
stances connected with water surface, for by 
these means a variety of color and a grace 
and evanescence are introduced in the re- 
flection otherwise impossible. . . . 

. . . Water in shade is much more re- 
flective than water in sunlight. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. I, pp. 97-99. 

There is hardly a roadside pond or pool 
which has not as much landscape in it as 
above it. It is not the brown, muddy, dull 
thing we suppose it to be ; it has a heart like 
ourselves, and in the bottom of that there 
are the boughs of the tall trees, and the 
blades of the shaking grass, and all manner 
of hues, of variable, pleasant light out of the 
sky ; nay, the ugly gutter that stagnates over 
the drain bars, in the heart of the foul city, 



246 NATURE STUDIES. 

is not altogether base ; down in that, if you 
will look deep enough, you may see the dark 
serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing 
of pure clouds. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. I, p. 94. 



COLOR STUDIES. 



Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, color is the 
holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. V, p. 146. 



VIII. 

COLOR STUDIES. 

The fact is, we none of us enough appre- 
ciate the nobleness and sacredness of color : 
Nothing is more common than to hear it 
spoken of as a subordinate beauty, — nay, 
even as the mere source of a sensual pleas- 
ure ; and we might almost believe that we 
were daily among men who 

" Could strip, for aught the prospect yields 
To them, their verdure from the fields ; 
And take the radiance from the clouds 
With which the sun his setting shrouds." 

But it is not so. Such expressions are used 
for the most part in thoughtlessness ; and if 
the speakers would only take the pains to 
imagine what the world and their own exist- 
ence would become, if the blue were taken 
from the sky, and the gold from the sunshine, 
and the verdure from the leaves, and the 
crimson from the blood which is the life of 
man, the flush from the cheek, the darkness 
from the eye, the radiance from the hair, — 
if they could see but for an instant, white 
human creatures living in a white world, — 

they would soon feel what they owe to color. 
249 



250 NATURE STUDIES. 

The fact is, that, of all God's gifts to the sight 
of man, color is the holiest, the most divine, 
the most solemn. We speak rashly of gay 
color and sad color, for color cannot at once 
be grave and gay. All good color is in some 
degree pensive, the loveliest is melancholy, 
and the purest and most thoughtful minds 
are those which love color the most. . . . 

I know no law more severely without ex- 
ception than this of the connection of pure 
color with profound and noble thought. . . . 

Nor does it seem difficult to discern a 
noble reason for this universal law. In that 
heavenly circle which binds the statutes of 
color upon the front of the sky, when it be- 
came the sign of the covenant of peace, the 
pure hues of divided light were sanctified to 
the human heart for ever; nor this, it would 
seem, by mere arbitrary appointment, but in 
consequence of the fore-ordained and marvel- 
lous constitution of those hues into a seven- 
fold, or, more strictly still, a threefold order, 
typical of the Divine nature itself. Observe 
also the name Shem or Splendor, given to 
that son of Noah in whom this covenant with 
mankind was to be fulfilled, and see how that 
name was justified by every one of the Asiatic 
races which descended from him. Not with- 
out meaning was the love of Israel to his 



COLOR STUDIES. 251 

chosen son expressed by the coat " of many 
colors "; not without deep sense of the sacred- 
ness of that symbol of purity, did the lost 
daughter of David tear it from her breast : — 
" With such robes were the king's daughters 
that were virgins apparelled." We know it 
to have been by Divine command that the 
Israelite, rescued from servitude, veiled the 
tabernacle with its rain of purple and scarlet, 
while the under sunshine flashed through 
the fall of the color from its tenons of gold ; 
but was it less by Divine guidance that the 
Mede, as he struggled out of anarchy, encom- 
passed his king with the sevenfold burning 
of the battlements of Ecbatana ? — of which 
one circle was golden like the sun, and an- 
other silver like the moon; and then came 
the great sacred chord of color, blue, purple, 
and scarlet ; and then a circle white like the 
day, and another dark, like night: so that 
the city rose like a great mural rainbow, a 
sign of peace amidst the contending of law- 
less races, and guarded with color and shadow, 
that seemed to symbolize the great order 
which rules over Day, and Night, and Time, 
the first organization of the mighty statutes, 
— the law of the Medes and Persians that 
altereth not. 

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. V, pp. 145-148. 



252 NATURE STUDIES. 

I have already, in the Stones of Venice, 
insisted on the sacredness of color, and its 
necessary connection with all pure and noble 
feeling: — but perhaps, I have not yet enough 
insisted on the simplest and readiest to hand 
of all proofs, — the way, namely, in which 
God has employed color in His creation as 
the unvarying accompaniment of all that 
is purest, most innocent and most precious : 
while for things precious only in material 
uses, or dangerous, common colors are re- 
served. Consider for a little while what sort 
of a world it would be if all flowers were 
gray, all leaves black, and the sky brown. 
. . . Then observe how constantly innocent 
things are bright in color ; look at a dove's 
neck, and compare it with the gray back of 
a viper ; I have often heard talk of brilliantly 
colored serpents: and I suppose there are 
such — as there are gay poisons, like the 
fox-glove and kalmia — types of deceit; but 
all the venomous serpents I have really seen 
are gray, brick-red or brown, variously mot- 
tled; and the most awful serpent I have seen, 
the Egyptian asp, is precisely of the color of 
gravel, or only a little grayer. So again, the 
crocodile and alligator are gray, but the inno- 
cent lizard green and beautiful. I do not 
mean that this rule is invariable, otherwise 



COLOR STUDIES. 253 

it would be more convincing than the lessons 
of the natural universe are intended ever to 
be ; there are beautiful colors on the leopard 
and tiger, and in the berries of the night- 
shade: and there is nothing very notable 
in the brilliancy of color either in sheep or 
cattle : . . . but take a wider view of Nature, 
and compare generally rainbows, sunrises, 
roses, violets, butterflies, birds, goldfish, 
rubies, opals, and corals, with alligators, hip- 
popotami, lions, wolves, bears, swine, sharks, 
slugs, bones, fungi, fogs, and corrupting, 
stinging, destroying things in general, and 
you will feel then how the question stands 
between the colorist and chiaroscurists, — 
which of them have Nature and life on their 
side, and which have sin and death. . . . 

All men, completely organized and justly 
tempered enjoy color: it is meant for the 
perpetual comfort and delight of the human 
heart. It is richly bestowed on the highest 
works of creation, and the eminent sign and 
seal of perfection in them ; being associated 
with life in the human body, with light in 
the sky, with purity and hardness in the 
earth, — death, night, and pollution of all 
kinds being colorless. . . . 

To color well requires real talent and 
earnest study, and to color perfectly is the 



254 NATURE STUDIES. 

rarest and most precious power an artist can 
possess. Every other gift may be errone- 
ously cultivated, but this will guide to all 
healthy, natural and forcible truth; the 
student may be led into folly by philoso- 
phers, and into falsehoods by purists; but 
he is always safe if he holds the hands of a 
colorist. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. Ill, pp. 75-80. 

All the primary and secondary colors 
are capable of infinitely various degrees of 
intensity or depression : they pass through 
every degree of increasing light, to perfect 
light, or white : and of increasing shade, to 
perfect absence of light, or black. And 
these are essential in the harmony required 
by sight ; so that no group of colors can be 
perfect that has not white in it, nor any 
that has not black ; or else the abatement or 
modesty of them, in the tertiary gray. So 
that these three form the limiting angles of 
the field, or cloudy ground of the rainbow. 
" I do set my bow in the cloud." 

And the nine colors of which you here 
see the essential group, have, as you know, 
been the messenger Iris ; . . . 

The names of these colors in ordinary 
shields of knighthood are those given oppo- 



COLOR STUDIES. 255 

site, in the left hand column. The names 
given them in blazoning the shields of 
nobles, are those of the correspondent 
gems: 

The Primary Colors. 

1 Or . . . . Topaz 

2 Gules . . . Ruby 

3 Azure . . . Sapphire 

The Secondary Colors. 

4 Ecarlate . . . Jasper 

5 Vert .... Emerald 

6 Purpure . . . Hyacinth 

The Tertiary Colors. 

7 Argent . . . Carbuncle 

8 Sable . . . Diamond 

9 Colombin . . . Pearl 

I. Or. Stands between the light and dark- 
ness ; as the Sun, who, " rejoiceth as a strong 
man to run his course, between the morning 
and the evening. . . . 

II. Gules (rose color) from the Persian 
word "gul," for the rose. It is the exactly 
central hue between the dark red, and pale 
red, or wild-rose. It is the color of love, the 
fulfilment of the joy and of the love of life 
upon the earth. . . . The stone of it is the 
Ruby. 

III. Azure. The color of the blue sky in 



256 NATURE STUDIES. 

the height of it, at noon ; type of the fulfil- 
ment of all joy and love in heaven, as the 
rose-color, of the fulfilment of all joy and 
love in earth. And the stone of this is the 
Sapphire ; and because the loves of Earth 
and Heaven are in truth one, the ruby and 
sapphire are indeed the same stone ; and they 
are colored as if by enchantment, — how, or 
with what, no chemist has yet shown, — the 
one azure and the other rose. . . . 

IV. ficarlate (scarlet). I use the French 
word because all other heraldic words for 
colours are Norman French. . . . The color 
meant — Carnation; zVzcarnation ; the color 
of the body of man in its beauty ; of the 
maid's scarlet blush in noble love; of the 
youth's scarlet glow in noble war; the dye 
of the earth into which heaven has breathed 
its spirit: — incarnate strength — incarnate 
modesty. The stone of it is the Jasper, 
which is colored with the same iron that 
colors the human blood. . . . 

V. Vert (viridis) from the same root as 
the words " virtue " and " virgin," — the color 
of the green rod in budding spring; the 
noble life of youth, born in the spirit, — as 
the scarlet means, the life of noble youth, in 
flesh. It is seen most perfectly in clear air 
after the sun has set, — the blue of the upper 



COLOR STUDIES. 257 

sky brightening down into it — and the stone 
of it is the Emerald. . . . 

VI. Purpure. The true purple of the 
Tabernacle, " blue, purple, and scarlet " — 
the kingly color, retained afterwards in all 
manuscripts of the Greek Gospels. ... It 
is rose color darkened or saddened with 
blue; the color of love in noble or divine 
sorrow. ... Its stone is the Jacinth, Hya- 
cinth, or Amethyst, — "like to that sable 
flower inscribed with woe." 

In these six colors, then, you have the 
rainbow, or angelic iris, of the light and 
covenant of life. 

VII. Argent. Silver, or snow-color; of 
the hoar-frost on the earth, or the star of 
the morning 

VIII. Sable, (sable, sabulum) the color 
of sand of the great hour-glass of the world, 
outshaken. Its stone is the diamond, — 
never yet, so far as I know, found but in 
the sand. . . . 

IX. Gray. (When deep, the second violet, 
giving Dante's full chord of the seven colors.) 
The abatement of light, the abatement of the 
darkness, . . . the color of the turtle-dove, 
with the message that the waters are abated. 
... Its stone is the Pearl. . . . 

— Deucalion % Chap. VII, pp. 75-80. 



258 NATURE STUDIES. 

Perhaps the great monotone grey of 
Nature and of Time is a better color than 
any that the human hand can give. 

— Stones of Venice % Vol. II, Chap. IV, p. 94. 

We have been speaking of what is con- 
stant and necessary in Nature, of the 
ordinary effects of daylight on ordinary 
colors, and we repeat, that no gorgeousness 
of the palette can reach even these. But it 
is a widely different thing when Nature her- 
self takes a coloring fit, and does something 
extraordinary, something really to exhibit 
her power. She has a thousand ways and 
means of rising above herself, but incom- 
parably the noblest manifestations of her 
capability of color are in these sunsets 
among the high clouds. I speak especially 
of the moment before the sun sinks, when 
his light turns pure rose-color, and when 
this light falls upon a zenith covered with 
countless cloud-forms of inconceivable deli- 
cacy, threads and flakes of vapor, which 
would in common daylight be pure snow 
white, and which give therefore fair field to 
the tone of light. There is then no limit 
to the multitude, and no check to the inten- 
sity of the hues assumed. The whole sky 
from the zenith to the horizon becomes one 



COLOR STUDIES. 259 

molten, mantling sea of color and fire ; every 
black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple 
and wave into unsullied, shadowless, crim- 
son, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for 
which there are no words in language, and 
no ideas in the mind, — things which can 
only be conceived while they are visible, — 
the intense hollow blue of the upper sky 
melting through it all, — showing here deep, 
and pure, and lightless, there, modulated by 
the filmy, formless body of the transparent 
vapor till it is lost imperceptibly in its crim- 
son and gold. 

—Modern Pointers >Vo\. I, Part II, Sect. II, Chap. II, pp. 262, 263. 

It is with interest and reverence to be 
noted as a physical truth that in a state of joy- 
ful and healthy excitement the eye becomes 
more highly sensitive to the beauty of color, 
and especially to the blue and red rays, while 
in depression and disease all colors become 

dim tO US. — The Art of England, Lecture VI, p. 351 . 

Nature herself produces all her loveliest 
colours in some kind of solid or liquid glass 
or crystal. The rainbow is painted on a 
shower of melted glass, and the colours of 
the opal are produced in vitreous flint mixed 
with water ; the green and blue, and golden 



2 6o NATURE STUDIES. 

or amber brown of flowing water is in its 
surface glossy, and in motion, 'splendidior 
vitro * ! And the loveliest colours ever 
granted to human sight — those of morning 
and evening clouds before or after rain — 
are produced on minute particles of finely- 
divided water, or perhaps sometimes, ice. 
But more than this. If you examine with 
a lens some of the richest colours of flowers, 
as, for instance, those of the gentian and 
dianthus, you will find their texture is pro- 
duced by a crystalline or sugary frost-work 
upon them. In the lychnis of the high Alps, 
the red and white have a kind of sugary 
bloom, as rich as it is delicate. It is inde- 
scribable: but if you can fancy very pow- 
dery and crystalline snow mixed with the 
softest cream, and then dashed with car- 
mine, it may give you some idea of the 
look of it. There are no colours, either in 
the nacre of shells, or the plumes of birds 
and insects, which are so pure as those 
of clouds, opal, or flowers ; but the force of 
purple and blue in some butterflies, and the 
methods of clouding, and strength of bur- 
nished lustre, in plumage like the peacock's, 
give them more universal interest ; in some 
birds, also, as in our own kingfisher, the 
colour nearly reaches a floral preciousness. 



COLOR STUDIES. 261 

The lustre in most, however, is metallic, 
rather than vitreous; and the vitreous al- 
ways gives the purest hue. Entirely com- 
mon and vulgar compared with these, yet 
to be noticed as completing the crystalline 
or vitreous system, we have the colours of 
gems. The green of the emerald is the 
best of these; but at its best is as vulgar 
as house-painting beside the green of birds' 
plumage or of clear water. No diamond 
shows colour so pure as a dewdrop : the ruby 
is like the pink of an ill-dyed and half- 
washed-out print, compared to the dianthus ; 
and the carbuncle is usually quite dead 
unless set with a foil, and even then is not 
prettier than the seed of a pomegranate. 
The opal is, however, an exception. When 
pure and uncut in its native rock, it pre- 
sents the most lovely colours that can be 
seen in the world, except those of clouds. 

— Lectures on Art., Lecture VII, pp. 311, 312. 

You see the broad blue sky every day 
over your heads ; but you do not for that 
reason determine blue to be less or more 
beautiful than you did at first; you are un- 
accustomed to see stones as blue as the 
sapphire, but you do not for that reason 
think the sapphire less beautiful than other 



262 NATURE STUDIES. 

stones. The blue color is everlastingly 
appointed by the Deity to be a source of 
delight; and whether seen perpetually over 
your head, or crystallised once in a thou- 
sand years into a single and incomparable 
stone, your acknowledgment of its beauty 
is equally natural, simple and instantaneous. 

— Lectures on Architecture and Paintings Lecture I, p. 228. 

An entirely perfect summer light . . . 
Divine beauty of western color on thyme 
and rose — then twilight of clearest warm 
amber far into night, of pale amber all 
night long; hills dark-clear against it. And 
so it continued, growing more intense in 
blue and sunlight, all day . . . and so it went 
glowing on . . . finally, new moon like a 
lime-light reflected on breeze-struck water ; 
traces, across dark calm, of reflected hills. 

— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, p. 388. 

A color, in association with other colors, 
is different from the same color seen by it- 
self. It has a distinct and peculiar power, 
upon the retina dependent on its associ- 
ations. Consequently the color of any ob- 
ject is not more dependent upon the nature 
of the object itself, and the eye beholding 
it, than on the color of the objects near it. 

— Modern Painters, VoL I, Part II, Sect. I, Chap. V, p. 150. 



COLOR STUDIES. 263 

A heavy rain-cloud raced us — and stooped 
over us, stealing the blue inch by inch, till 
it had left only a strip of amber-blue behind 
the Apennines, the near hills thrown into 
dark purple shade, the snow behind them, 
first blazing — the only strong light in the 
picture — then in shade, dark against the 
pure sky; the gray above, warm and lurid — 
a little washed with rain in parts ; below, a 
copse of willow coming against the dark 
purples, nearly pure Indian yellow, a little 
touched with red. Then came a lovely bit 
of aqueduct, with coats of shattered mosaic, 
the hills seen through its arches, and pieces 
of bright green meadow mixing with the 
yellow of the willows. 

— Praterita,Vo\, II, Chap. Ill, pp. 231, 232. 

There is not a leaf in the world which has 
the same color, visible over its whole surface ; 
it has a white high light somewhere ; and in 
proportion as it curves to or from that focus, 
the color is brighter or grayer. Pick up a 
common flint from the roadside, and count, 
if you can, its changes and hues of color. 
Every bit of bare ground under your feet 
has in it a thousand such — the gray pebbles, 
the warm ochre, the green of incipient vege- 
tation, the grays and blacks of its reflexes 



264 NATURE STUDIES. 

and shadows, might keep a painter at work 
for a month, if he were obliged to follow 
them touch for touch. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. II, Chap. II, p. 271. 

The best image which the world can give 
of Paradise is in the slope of the meadows, 
orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a 
great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal 
snows above; this excellence not being in 
any wise a matter referable to feeling, or 
individual preference, but demonstrable by 
calm enumeration of the number of lovely 
colors on the rocks, the varied grouping of 
the trees, and quantity of noble incidents in 
stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the eye 
at any given moment. For consider the dif- 
ference produced in the whole tone of land- 
scape color by the introduction of purple, 
violet, and deep ultramarine blue, which we 
owe to mountains. In the ordinary lowland 
landscape we have the blue of the sky ; the 
green of grass ; the green of trees ; and cer- 
tain elements of purple, far more rich and 
beautiful than we generally should think, in 
their bark and shadows (bare hedges and 
thickets, or tops of trees, in subdued after- 
noon sunshine, are nearly perfect purple, and 
of an exquisite tone), as well as in ploughed 



COLOR STUDIES. 265 

fields, and dark ground in general. But 
among mountains, in addition to all this, 
large unbroken spaces of pure violet and 
purple are introduced in their distances; 
and even near, by films of cloud passing over 
the darkness of ravines or forests, blues are 
produced of the most subtle tenderness; 
these azures and purples passing into rose- 
color of otherwise wholly unattainable deli- 
cacy among the upper summits, the blue of 
the sky being at the same time purer and 
deeper than in the plains. Nay, in some 
sense, a person who has never seen the rose- 
color of the rays of dawn crossing a blue 
mountain twelve or fifteen miles away, can 
hardly be said to know what tenderness in 
color means at all ; bright tenderness he may, 
indeed, see in the sky or in a flower, but this 
grave tenderness of the far-away hill-purples 
he cannot conceive. 

Together with this great source of pre- 
eminence in mass of color, we have to esti- 
mate the influence of the finished inlaying 
and enamel-work of the color-jewelry on 
every stone; and that of the continual variety 
in species of flower; most of the mountain 
flowers being, besides, separately lovelier 
than the lowland ones. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XX, pp. 427, 429. 



266 NATURE STUDIES. 

Respecting the various rocks — out of 
them we may obtain almost every color 
pleasant to human sight, not the less so for 
being generally a little softened or saddened. 
Thus we have the beautifully subdued reds, 
reaching tones of deep purple, in the porphy- 
ries, and of pale rose color, in the granites ; 
every kind of silver and leaden gray, passing 
into purple, in the slates; deep green, and 
every hue of greenish gray, in the volcanic 
rocks and serpentines; rich orange, and 
golden brown in the gneiss; black in the 
lias limestones ; and all these, together with 
pure white, in the marbles. One color only 
we hardly ever get in an exposed rock — that 
dull brown which we noticed in speaking of 
color generally, as the most repulsive of all 
hues ; every approximation to it is softened 
by nature, when exposed to the atmosphere, 
into a purple gray. All this can hardly be 
otherwise interpreted, than as prepared for 
the delight and recreation of man; and I 
trust that the time may soon come when 
these beneficent and beautiful gifts of color 
may be rightly felt and wisely employed, and 
when the variegated fronts of our houses 
may render the term "stone-color" as little 
definite in the mind of the architect as that of 
" flower-color " would be to the horticulturist. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XI, p. 178. 



COLOR STUDIES. 267 

Scarlet color, — or pure red, intensified 
by expression of light, — is, of all the three 
primitive colors, that which is most distinc- 
tive. Yellow is of the nature of simple light ; 
blue, connected with simple shade ; but red 
is an entirely abstract color. It is red to 
which the color-blind are blind, as if to show 
us that it was not necessary merely for the 
service or comfort of man, but that there was 
a special gift or teaching in this color. Ob- 
serve, farther, that it is this color which the 
sunbeams take in passing through the earth's 
atmosphere. The rose of dawn and sunset 
is the hue of the rays passing close over the 
earth. It is also concentrated in the blood 
of man. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. XI, p. 399. 

Color is, in brief terms, the type of love. 
Hence it is especially connected with the 
blossoming of the earth ; and again, with its 
fruits ; also, with the spring and fall of the 
leaf, and with the morning and evening of 
the day, in order to show the waiting of love 
about the birth and death of man. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. XI, p. 405. 

The Greek liked purple, as a general source 
of enjoyment better than any other color, and 



268 NATURE STUDIES. 

so all healthy persons who have eye for color, 
and are unprejudiced about it do. . . . 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XIV, p. 280. 

Some three arrowflights further up into 
the wood we come to a tall tree, which is at 
first barren, but, after some little time, visibly 
opens into flowers, of a color " less than that 
of roses, but more than that of violets." It 
certainly would not be possible, in words, 
to come nearer to the definition of the exact 
hue which Dante meant — that of the apple- 
blossom. Had he employed any simple color- 
phrase, as a " pale pink " or " violet pink " or 
any such combined expression, he still could 
not have completely got at the delicacy of 
the hue ; he might perhaps have indicated its 
kind, but not its tenderness ; but by taking 
the rose-leaf as the type of the delicate red, 
and then enfeebling this with the violet gray, 
he gets, as closely as language can carry him, 
to the complete rendering of the vision, 
though it is evidently felt by him to be in 
its perfect beauty ineffable; and rightly so 
felt, for of all lovely things which grace the 
spring time in our fair temperate zone, I am 
not sure but this blossoming of the apple- 
tree is the fairest. At all events, I find it 
associated in my mind with four other kinds 



COLOR STUDIES. 269 

of color, certainly principal among the gifts 
of the northern earth, namely: 

1st. Bell gentians growing close together, 
mixed with lilies of the valley, on the Jura 
pastures. 

2d. Alpine roses with dew upon them, 
under low rays of morning sunshine, touch- 
ing the tops of the flowers. 

3d. Bell heather in mass, in full light, at 
sunset. 

4th. White narcissus (red centered) in 
mass, on the Vevay pastures, in sunshine 
after rain. 

And I know not where in the group to 
place the wreaths of apple-blossoms in the 
Vevay orchards, with the far-off blue of the 
Lake of Geneva seen between the flowers. 

—Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XIV, pp. 281, 282. 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 



If human life be cast among trees at all, the love 
borne to them is a sure test of its purity. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. I, p. 24. 



IX. 

TREES AND THEIR MINISTR V. 

Being prepared for us in all ways, and 
made beautiful, and good for food and 
for building, and for instruments of our 
hands, this race of plants, — (trees) — de- 
serving boundless affection and admiration 
from us, become in proportion to their 
obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our 
being in right temper of mind and way of 
life, so that no one can be far wrong in 
either who loves the trees enough, and every 
one is assuredly wrong in both, who does 
not love them, if his life has brought them 
in his way. It is clearly possible to do with- 
out them, for the great companionship of 
the sea and sky are all that sailors need ; 
and many a noble heart has been taught the 
best it had to learn between dark stone walls. 
Still if human life be cast among trees at 
all, the love borne to them is a sure test of 
its purity. . . . And sometimes I cannot but 
think of the trees of the earth as capable 
of a kind of sorrow, in that imperfect life of 
theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves 
in the warm spring-time in vain for men ; — 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. I, pp. 24-26. 
273 



274 NATURE STUDIES. 

As you draw trees more and more in their 
various states of health and hardship, you 
will be every day more struck by the beauty 
of the types they present of the truths most 
essential for mankind to know, and you will 
see what this vegetation of the earth, which 
is necessary to our life, first, as purifying 
the air for us and then as food, and just as 
necessary to our joy in all places of the earth, 
— what these trees and leaves, I say, are 
meant to teach us as we contemplate them, 
and read or hear their lovely language, 
written or spoken for us, not in frightful 
black letters, nor in dull sentences, but in 
fair green and shadowy shapes of waving 
words, and blossomed brightness of odorif- 
erous wit, and sweet whispers of unintrusive 
wisdom, and playful morality. 

— Tht Elements of Draiuing) Letter III, p. 380. 

A very old forest tree is a thing subject 
to the same laws of nature as ourselves; 
it is an energetic being, liable to and ap- 
proaching death ; its age is written on every 
spray; and because we see it susceptible of 
life and annihilation, like our own, we imag- 
ine it must be capable of the same feelings, 
and possess the same faculties, and, above 
all others, memory: it is always telling us 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 275 

about the past, never pointing to the future ; 
we appeal to it, as to a thing which has seen 
and felt during a life similar to our own, 
though of ten times its duration, and there- 
fore receive from it a perpetual impression 
of antiquity. . . . This being the case, it is 
evident that the chief feeling induced by 
woody country is one of reverence for its 
antiquity. There is a quiet melancholy 
about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, 
which is enhanced by the green and elastic 
vigour of the young saplings : the noble form 
of the forest aisles, and the subdued light 
which penetrates their entangled boughs, 
combine to add to the impression; and the 
whole character of the scene is calculated 
to excite conservative feeling. 

— The Poetry of Architecture , Chap. I, p. 56. 

Throughout all the freedom of her wildest 
foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an 
encompassing limit: and marking a unity in 
the whole tree, caused not only by the rising 
of its branches from a common root, but by 
their joining in one work, and being bound 
by a common law. 

— Elements of Drawing, Letter III, p. 377. 



276 NATURE STUDIES. 

Building Plants. These will not live on 
the ground, but eagerly raise edifices above 
it. Each works hard with solemn fore- 
thought all its life. Perishing, it leaves its 
work in the form which will be most useful 
to its successors — its own monument and 
their inheritance. These architectural edi- 
fices we call " Trees." ... In questioning the 
true builders as to their modes of work, I 
find that they are divisible into two great 
classes — "Builders with the shield" and 
" Builders with the sword." Builders with 
the shield have expanded leaves, more or less 
resembling shields, partly in shape, but still 
more in office ; for under their lifted shadow 
the young bud of the next year is kept from 
harm. These are the gentlest of the builders, 
and live in pleasant places, providing food 
and shelter for man. Builders with the sword, 
on the contrary, have sharp leaves in the 
shape of swords, and the young buds, instead 
of being as numerous as the leaves, crouch- 
ing each under a leaf-shadow, are few in 
number, and grow fearlessly, each in the 
midst of a sheaf of swords. These builders 
live in savage places, are sternly dark in 
color, and though they give much health to 
man by their merely physical strength, they 
(with few exceptions) give him no food, and 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 277 

imperfect shelter. Their mode of building is 
ruder than that of the shield-builders, and 
they in many ways resemble the pillar-plants 
of the opposite order. We call them gener- 
ally " Pines." . . . The chief mystery of vege- 
tation, so far as respects external form, is 
among the fair shield-builders. . . . 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. I, pp. 29, 31. 

If you gather in summer time an outer 
spray of any shield-leaved tree, you will find 
it consists of a slender rod, throwing out 
leaves, perhaps on every side, perhaps on two 
sides only, with usually a cluster of closer 
leaves at the end. ... If you look close you 
will see small projecting points at the roots of 
the leaves. These represent buds. Whether 
you find them or not, they are there — visible, 
or latent, does not matter. Every leaf has 
assuredly an infant bud to take care of, laid 
tenderly, as in a cradle, just where the leaf- 
stalk forms a safe niche between it and the 
main stem. The child-bud is thus fondly 
guarded all summer ; but its protecting leaf 
dies in the autumn ; and then the boy-bud 
is put out to rough winter schooling, by 
which he is prepared for personal entrance 
into public life in the spring. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Chap. Ill, pp. 32, 33. 



278 NATURE STUDIES. 

Having now some clear idea of the posi- 
tion of the bud, we have now to examine the 
forms and structure of its shield — the leaf 
which guards it. You will form the best 
general idea of the flattened leaf of shield- 
builders by thinking of it as you would of a 
mast and a sail. . . . To some extent, indeed, 
it has yards also, ribs branching from the in- 
nermost one ; only the yards of the leaf will 
not run up and down, which is one essential 
function of a sail-yard. 

The analogy will, however, serve one step 
more. As the sail must be on one side of 
the mast, so the expansion of a leaf is on one 
side of its central rib, or of its system of 
ribs. It is laid over them as if it were 
stretched over a frame, so that on the upper 
surface it is comparatively smooth; on the 
lower, barred. 

. . . The leaves are the feeders of the plant. 
Their own orderly habits of succession must 
not interfere with their main business of 
rinding food. Where the sun and air are, 
the leaf must go, whether it be out of order 
or not. So, therefore, in any group, the first 
consideration with the young leaves is much 
like that of young bees, how to keep out of 
each other's way, that every one may at once 
leave its neighbors as much free-air pasture 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 279 

as possible, and obtain a relative freedom for 
itself. This would be a quite simple matter 
and produce other simply balanced forms, if 
each branch, with open air all round it, had 
nothing to think of but reconcilement of 
interests among- its own leaves. But every 
branch has others to meet or to cross, shar- 
ing with them, in various advantage, what 
shade or sun, or rain is to be had. Hence 
every single leaf-cluster presents the general 
aspect of a little family, entirely at unity 
among themselves, but obliged to get their 
living by various shifts, concessions, and in- 
fringements of the family rules, in order not 
to invade the privileges of other people in 
their neighborhood. 

And in the arrangement of these conces- 
sions there is an exquisite sensibility among 
the leaves. They do not grow each to his 
own liking, till they run against one another, 
and then turn back sulkily; but by a watch- 
ful instinct, far apart, they anticipate their 
companion's courses, as ships at sea, and in 
every unfolding of their edged tissue, guide 
themselves by the sense of each other's re- 
mote presence, and by a watchful penetration 
of leafy purpose in the far future. So that 
every shadow which one casts on the next, 
and every glint of sun which each reflects to 



2 8o NATURE STUDIES. 

the next, and every touch which in toss of 
storm each receives from the next, aid or 
arrest the development of their advancing 
form, and direct, as will be safest and best, 
the curve of every fold and the current of 
every vein. 

— Modern Painters , Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. IV, pp. 43-57. 

It is evident that the more leaves the 
stalk has to sustain, the more strength it 
requires. It might appear, therefore, not 
unadvisable, that every leaf should as it 
grew, pay a small tax to the stalk for its 
sustenance; so that there might be no fear 
of any number of leaves being too oppres- 
sive to their bearer. Which, accordingly, 
is just what the leaves do. Each, from the 
moment of his complete majority, pays a 
stated tax to the stalk ; that is to say, collects 
for it a certain quantity of wood, or materials 
for wood, and sends this wood, or what ulti- 
mately will become wood, down the stalk to 
add to its thickness. 

" Down the stalk ? " Yes, and down a 
great way farther. For, as the leaves, if they 
did not thus contribute to their own support, 
would soon be too heavy for the spray, so 
if the spray, with its family of leaves, con- 
tributed nothing to the thickness of the 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 281 

branch, the leaf-families would soon break 
down their sustaining branches. And, simi- 
larly, if the branches gave nothing to the 
stem, the stem would soon fall under its 
boughs. Therefore, as each leaf adds to the 
thickness of the shoot, so each shoot to the 
branch, so each branch to the stem, and that 
with so perfect an order and regularity of 
duty, that from every leaf in all the count- 
less crowd at the tree's summit, one slender 
fibre, or at least fibre's thickness of wood, de- 
scends through shoot, through spray, through 
branch, and through stem ; and having thus 
added, in its due proportion, to form the 
strength of the tree, labors yet farther, and 
more painfully to provide for its security: 
and thrusting forward into the root, loses 
nothing of its mighty energy, until, mining 
through the darkness, it has taken hold in 
cleft of rock or depth of earth, as extended 
as the sweep of its green crest in the free 
air. Such, at least, is the mechanical aspect 
of the tree. The work of its construc- 
tion, considered as a branch tower, partly 
propped by buttresses, partly lashed by 
cables, is thus shared in by every leaf. 
But considering it as a living body to be 
nourished, it is probably an inaccurate anal- 
ogy to speak of the leaves being taxed for 



282 NATURE STUDIES. 

the enlargement of the trunk. Strictly 
speaking the trunk enlarges by sustaining 
them. For each leaf, however far removed 
from the ground, stands in need of nour- 
ishment derived from the ground, as well 
as of that which it finds in the air; and it 
simply sends its root down along the stem 
of the tree, until it reaches the ground and 
obtains the necessary mineral elements. 
The trunk has been therefore called by 
some botanists "a bundle of roots" but I 
think inaccurately. It is rather a messen- 
ger to the roots. A root, properly so called, 
is a fibre, spongy, or absorbent at the ex- 
tremity, which secretes certain elements 
from the earth. The stem is by this defini- 
tion, no more a cluster of roots than a clus- 
ter of leaves, but a channel of intercourse 
between the roots and the leaves. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. VI, pp. 68, 69, 

So far as you can watch a tree, it is pro- 
duced throughout by repetitions of the same 
process, which repetitions, however, are arbi- 
trarily directed so as to produce one effect at 
one time, and another at another time. A 
young sapling has his branches as much as 
the tall tree. He does not shoot up in a 
long thin rod, and begin to branch when he 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 283 

is ten or fifteen feet high. . . . The young 
sapling conducts himself with all the dignity 
of a tree from the first,— only he so manages 
his branches as to form a support for his 
future life, in a strong straight trunk, that 
will hold him well off the ground. Prudent 
little sapling! — but how does he manage 
this? how keep the young branches from 
rambling about, till the proper time, or on 
what plea dismiss them from his service if 
they will not help his provident purpose? 
So again, there is no difference in mode of 
construction between the trunk of a pine and 
its branch. But external circumstances so 
far interfere with the results of this repeated 
construction, that a stone pine rises for a 
hundred feet like a pillar, and then suddenly 
bursts into a cloud. It is the knowledge of 
the mode in which such change may take 
place which forms the true natural history of 
trees : — or more accurately, their moral his- 
tory. An animal is born with so many limbs, 
and a head of such a shape. That is, strictly 
speaking, not its history, but one fact of its 
history ; a fact of which no other account can 
be given than that it was so appointed. But 
a tree is born without a head. It has got to 
make its own head. It is born like a little 
family from which a great nation is to spring; 



284 NATURE STUDIES. 

and at a certain time, under peculiar exter- 
nal circumstances, this nation, every indi- 
vidual of which remains the same in nature 
and temper, yet gives itself a new political 
constitution, and sends out branch colonies, 
which enforce forms of law and life entirely 
different from those of the parent state. 
This is the history of the state. It is also 
the history of a tree. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. VII, p. 82. 

What the elm and oak are to England, the 
olive is to Italy. ... Its classical associations 
double its importance in Greece ; and in the 
Holy Land the remembrances connected 
with it are of course more touching than can 
ever belong to any other tree of the field. 

... I do not want painters to tell me any 
scientific facts about olive-trees. But it had 
been well for them to have felt and seen the 
olive-tree ; to have loved it for Christ's sake, 
partly also for the helmed Wisdom's sake 
which was to the heathen in some sort as 
that nobler Wisdom which stood at God's 
right hand, when He founded the earth and 
established the heavens. To have loved it, 
even to the hoary dimness of its delicate 
foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as if the 
ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 285 

upon it forever; and to have traced, line by 
line, the gnarled writhing of its intricate 
branches, and the pointed fretwork of its 
light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue 
field of the sky, and the small rosy-white 
stars of its spring blossoming, and the beads 
of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its 
topmost boughs — the right, in Israel, of the 
stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, — and 
more than all, the softness of the mantle, 
silver grey, and tender like the down on a 
bird's breast, with which, far away, it veils 
the undulation of the mountains; — 

Now the main characteristics of an olive- 
tree are these. It has sharp and slender 
leaves of a greyish green, nearly grey on the 
under surface, and resembling, but somewhat 
smaller than, those of our common willow. 
Its fruit, when ripe, is black and lustrous ; 
but of course so small, that unless in great 
quantity, it is not conspicuous upon the tree. 
Its trunk and branches are peculiarly fantas- 
tic in their twisting, showing their fibres at 
every turn ; and the trunk is often hollow, 
and even rent into many divisions like sepa- 
rate stems, but the extremities are exquisitely 
graceful, especially in the setting out of the 
leaves, and the notable and characteristic 
effect of the tree in the distance is of a 



286 NATURE STUDIES. 

rounded and soft mass or ball of downy 
foliage. 

— The Stones of Venice* Vol. III. Conclusion, pp. 175, 177. 

It may be said to be a universal law with 
respect to the boughs of all trees that they 
incline their extremities more to the ground 
in proportion as they are lower on the trunk, 
and that the higher their point of insertion 
is, the more they share in the upward ten- 
dency of the trunk itself. But yet there is 
not a single group of boughs in any one tree 
which does not show exception to this rule, 
and present boughs lower in insertion, and 
yet steeper in inclination than their neigh- 
bors. Nor is this defect or deformity, but 
the result of the constant habit of Nature to 
carry variety into her very principles, and 
make the symmetry and beauty of her laws 
the more felt by the grace and accidentalism 
with which they are carried out. No one 
familiar with foliage could doubt for an 
instant of the necessity of giving evidence 
of this downward tendency in the boughs; 
but it would be nearly as great an offence 
against truth to make the law hold good with 
every individual branch, as not to exhibit its 
influence on the majority. 

— Modern PaiHters> Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. II, p. 51. 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 287 

Getting into a cart-road among some 
young trees, where there was nothing to see 
but the blue sky through thin branches I lay 
down on the bank by the road-side to see if I 
could sleep. But I couldn't, and the branches 
against the blue sky began to interest me. . . . 
Feeling gradually somewhat livelier ... I 
took out my sketch-book and began to draw 
a little aspen tree, on the other side of the 
cart-road. . . . Languidly, but not idly, I 
began to draw it; and as I drew, the languor 
passed away : the beautiful lines insisted on 
being traced, — without weariness. More and 
more beautiful they became, as each rose out 
of the rest, and took its place in the air. 
With wonder increasing every instant, I saw 
that they " composed " themselves, by finer 
laws than any known of men. At last, the 
tree was there, and everything that I had 
thought before about trees, nowhere. . . . 
The woods, which I had only looked on as 
wilderness, fulfilled I then saw,in their beauty, 
the same laws which guided the clouds, di- 
vided the light, and balanced the wave. " He 
hath made everything beautiful, in his time " 
became for me thenceforward the interpreta- 
tion of the bond between the human mind 
and all visible things; and I returned along 
the wood-road feeling that it had led me far : 



288 NATURE STUDIES. 

— farther than ever fancy had reached, or 
theodolite measured. 

— Pr<zterita> Vol. II, Chap. IV, pp. 251, 253. 

Forms which can be no otherwise ac- 
counted for may often be explained by refer- 
ence to the natural features of the country, 
or to anything which habit must have ren- 
dered familiar, and therefore delightful. . . . 
And to the force of this vital instinct we 
have farther to add the influence of natural 
scenery ; and chiefly of the groups and wil- 
dernesses of the tree which is to the German 
mind what the olive or palm is to the South- 
ern, the spruce fir. The eye which has once 
been habituated to the continual serration 
of the pine forest, and to the multiplication 
of its infinite pinnacles, is not easily offended 
by the repetition of similar forms, nor easily 
satisfied by the simplicity of flat or massive 
outlines. Add to the influence of the pine, 
that of the poplar, more especially in the 
valleys of France ; but think of the spruce 
chiefly, and meditate on the difference of 
feeling with which the Northman would be 
inspired by the frost-work wreathed upon its 
glittering point, and the Italian by the dark 
green depth of sunshine on the broad table 
of the stone-pine (and consider by the way 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 289 

whether the spruce fir be a more heavenly- 
minded tree than those dark canopies of the 
Mediterranean isles). 

— Stones of Venice ; Vol. I, Chap. XIII, p. 156. 

Of the many marked adaptations of nature 
to the mind of man, it seems one of the most 
singular that trees intended especially for the 
adornment of the wildest mountains should 
be in broad outline the most formal of trees. 
The vine, which is to be the companion 
of man, is waywardly docile in its growth, 
falling into festoons beside his corn-fields, 
or roofing his garden-walls, or casting its 
shadow all summer upon his door. Associ- 
ated always with the trimness of cultivation, 
it introduces all possible elements of sweet 
wildness. The pine, placed nearly always 
among scenes disordered and desolate, brings 
into them all possible elements of order and 
precision. Lowland trees may lean to this 
side and that, though it is but a meadow 
breeze that bends them, or a bank of cowslips 
from which their trunks lean aslope. But 
let storm and avalanche do their worst, and 
let the pine find only a ledge of vertical 
precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow 
straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot 
down the stem ; — it shall point to the centre 
of the earth as long as the tree lives. 



290 NATURE STUDIES. 

Also it may be well for lowland branches 
to reach hither and thither for what they 
need, and to take all kinds of irregular shape 
and extension. But the pine is trained to 
need nothing, and to endure everything. It 
is resolvedly whole, self-contained, deserving 
nothing but Tightness, content with restricted 
completion. Tall or short, it will be straight. 
Small or large, it will be round. It may be 
permitted also to these soft lowland trees 
that they should make themselves gay with 
show of blossom, and glad with pretty chari- 
ties of fruitfulness. We builders with the 
sword have harder work to do for man, 
and must do it in close-set troops. To stay 
the sliding of the mountain snows which 
would bury him: to hold in divided drops, 
at our sword-points the rain, which would 
sweep him from his treasure-fields ; to nurse 
in shade among our brown fallen leaves the 
tricklings that feed the brooks in drought: 
to give massive shield against the winter 
wind, which shrieks through the bare 
branches of the plain: — such service must 
we do him steadfastly while we live. Our 
bodies, also, are at his service : softer than 
the bodies of other trees, though our toil is 
harder than theirs. Let him take them as 
pleases him, for his houses and ships. So 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 291 

also it may be well for these timid lowland 
trees to tremble with all their leaves, to turn 
their paleness to the sky, if but a rush of rain 
passes by them : or to let fall their leaves at 
last, sick and sere. But we pines must live 
carelessly amidst the wrath of clouds. We 
only wave our branches to and fro when the 
storm pleads with us, as men toss their arms 
in a dream. 

And finally, these weak lowland trees may 
struggle fondly for the last remnants of life, 
and send up feeble saplings again from their 
roots when they are cut down. But we 
builders with the sword perish boldly; our 
dying shall be perfect and solemn, as our 
warning ; we give up our lives without reluc- 
tance and forever. 

I wish the reader to fix his attention for a 
moment on these two great characters of the 
pine, its straightness and rounded perfect- 
ness: both wonderful, and in their issue 
lovely. I say, first, its straightness. . . . 
Other trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the 
form and sway of the ground, clothe it, with 
soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly 
its flatterers, partly its comforters. But the 
pine rises in serene resistance, self-contained : 
nor can I ever without awe stay long under 
a great Alpine cliff, far from all house or 



292 NATURE STUDIES. 

work of men, looking up to its companies of 
pine, as they stand on the inaccessible juts 
and perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in 
quiet multitudes, each like the shadow of the 
one beside it — upright, fixed, spectral, as 
troops of ghosts standing on the walls of 
Hades, not knowing each other — dumb for- 
ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry- 
to them: — those trees never heard human 
voice : they are far above all sound but of 
the winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf 
of theirs. All comfortless they stand, be- 
tween the two eternities of the Vacancy and 
the Rock ; yet with such iron will, that the 
rock itself looks bent and shattered before 
them — fragile, weak, inconsistent, compared 
to their dark energy of delicate life, and 
monotony of enchanted pride : unnumbered, 
unconquerable. 

Then note, farther, their perfectness. The 
impression on most people's minds must 
have been received more from pictures than 
reality, so far as I can judge: — so ragged 
they think the pine : whereas its chief char- 
acter in health is green and full roundness. 
It stands compact, like one of its own cones, 
slightly curved on its side, finished and quaint 
as a carved tree in some Elizabethan garden; 
and instead of being wild in expression, forms 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTR Y. 293 

the softest of all forest scenery; for other 
trees show their trunks and twisting boughs ; 
but the pine, growing either in luxuriant 
mass or in happy isolation, allows no branch 
to be seen. Summit behind summit rise its 
pyramidal ranges, or down to the very grass 
sweep the circlets of its boughs ; so that 
there is nothing but green cone and green 
carpet. Nor is it only softer, but in one 
sense more cheerful than other foliage: for 
it casts only a pyramidal shadow. Lowland 
forest arches overhead, and chequers the 
ground with darkness : but the pine, growing 
in scattered groups, leaves the glades be- 
tween emerald-bright. Its gloom is all its 
own : narrowing into the sky, it lets the sun- 
shine strike down to the dew. . . . 

The third character which I want you to 
notice in the pine is its exquisite fineness. 
Other trees rise against the sky in dots and 
knots, but this in fringes. You never see 
the edges of it, so subtle are they. ... It 
seems as if these trees, living always among 
the clouds, had caught part of their glory 
from them: and themselves the darkest of 
vegetation, could yet add splendor to the 
sun itself. . . . 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. IX, pp. 114-119. 



294 NATURE STUDIES. 

Pagan sculptors seem to have perceived 
little beauty in the stems of trees ; they were 
little less than timber to them. . . . But with 
Christian knowledge came a peculiar regard 
for the forms of vegetation, from the root 
upwards. The actual representation of the 
entire trees required in many scripture sub- 
jects, — as in the most frequent of Old Testa- 
ment subjects, the Fall: — familiarised the 
sculptors of bas-relief to the beauty of forms 
before unknown ; while the symbolical name 
given to Christ by the Prophets, "the Branch," 
and the frequent expressions referring to this 
image throughout every scriptural descrip- 
tion of conversion gave an especial interest to 
the Christian mind to this portion of vegeta- 
tive structure. 

— The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XX, p. 230. 

The green rod, or springing bough of a 
tree — the type of perfect human strength, 
both in the use of it in the Mosaic story, when 
it becomes a serpent, or strikes the rock ; or 
when Aaron's bears its almonds ; and in the 
metaphorical expression, the " Rod out of 
the stem of Jesse," and the " Man whose 
name is the Branch " and so on. And the 
essential idea of real virtue is that of a vital 
human strength, which instinctively, con- 



TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 295 

stantly, and without motive, does what is 
right. You must train men to this by habit, 
as you would the branch of a tree. 

— The Ethics of the Dust, Lecture VII, p. 90. 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS 

FOR 

COMFORT AND DELIGHT, 



Lovely flowers growing in the open air, are the 
proper guides of men to the places which their Maker 
intended them to inhabit. — Proserpina^ Chap. IV, p. 63. 

I 'm scarcely able to look at one flower because of 
the two on each side, in my garden just now, I want 
to have bees' eyes, there are so many lovely things. 



X. 

PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 

Flowers, like everything else that is lovely 
in the visible world, are only to be seen 
rightly with the eyes which the God who 
made them gave us ; and neither with micro- 
scopes nor spectacles. . . . The use of the 
great mechanical powers may indeed some- 
times be compatible with the due exercise 
of our own ; but the use of instruments for 
exaggerating the powers of sight necessarily 
deprives us of the best pleasures of sight. A 
flower is to be watched as it grows, in its 
association with the earth, the air, and the 
dew ; its leaves are to be seen as they expand 
in sunshine ; its colors, as they embroider the 
field, or illumine the forest. Dissect or mag- 
nify them, and all you discover or learn at 
last will be that oaks, roses, and daisies, are 
all made of fibres and bubbles; and these, 
again, of charcoal and water ; but for all their 
peeping and probing, nobody knows how. 

— Prceterita, Vol. II, Chap. X, p. 348. 

Some fifty years ago the poet Goethe dis- 
covered that all the parts of plants had a 

299 



3°° 



NATURE STUDIES. 



kind of common nature, and would change 
into each other. Now this was a true dis- 
covery, and a notable one ; and you will find, 
that, in fact, all plants are composed of essen- 
tially two parts — the leaf and root — one lov- 
ing the light, the other darkness ; one liking 
to be clean, the other to be dirty; one lik- 
ing to grow for the most part up, the other 
for the most part down; and each having 
faculties and purposes of its own. But the 
pure one, which loves the light, has, above all 
things, the purpose of being married to an- 
other leaf, and having child-leaves, and chil- 
dren's children of leaves, to make the earth 
fair forever. And when the leaves marry, 
they put on wedding-robes, and are more 
glorious than Solomon in all his glory, and 
they have feasts of honey, and we call them 

" Flowers." — Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter V, p. 62. 

What we especially need at present for 
educational purposes is to know, not the 
anatomy of plants, but their biography — 
how and where they live and die, their tem- 
pers, benevolences, malignities, distresses, and 
virtues. We want them drawn from their 
youth to their age, from bud to fruit. We 
ought to see the various forms of their di- 
minished but hardy growth in cold climates, 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 301 

or poor soils; and their rank or wild luxu- 
riance, when full-fed, and warmly nursed. 
And all this we ought to have drawn so 
accurately, that we might at once compare 
any given part of a plant with the same part 
of any other, drawn on the like conditions. 

— Lectures on Art> Lecture IV, p. 262. 

Your garden is to enable you to obtain 
such knowledge of plants as you may best 
use in the country in which you live, by com- 
municating it to others ; and teaching them 
to take pleasure in the green herb, given for 
meat, and the coloured flower, given for joy. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. II, Letter XLVI, p. 285. 
" To dress it and to keep it." 

That, then, was to be our work. Alas! 
what work have we set ourselves upon in- 
stead! How have we ravaged the garden 
instead of kept it — feeding our war-horses 
with flowers, and splintering its trees into 
spear-shafts ! 

" And at the East a flaming sword." 

Is its flame quenchless? and are those 
gates that keep the way indeed passable no 
more ? or is it not rather that we no more 
desire to enter? For what can we conceive 
of that first Eden which we might not yet 



3° : 



NATURE STUDIES. 



win back, if we chose ? It was a place full 
of flowers, we say. Well: the flowers are 
always striving to grow wherever we suffer 
them ; and the fairer, the closer. There may 
indeed have been a Fall of Flowers, as a 
Fall of Man : but assuredly creatures such 
as we are can now fancy nothing lovelier 
than roses and lilies, which would grow for 
us side by side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the 
Earth was white and red with them, if we 
cared to have it so. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. I, p. 21. 
Rome, Whit Monday. 

On the quiet road leading from under the 
Palatine to the little church of St. Nereo 
and Achilleo, I met, yesterday morning, 
group after group of happy peasants ... in 
Whit-Sunday dress . . . and the women all 
with bright artificial roses in their hair. . . . 
And the thing that struck me most in the 
look of it was not so much the cheerfulness, 
as the dignity ; — in a true sense, the becom- 
ingness and decorousness of the ornament. 
Among the ruins of the dead city, and the 
worse desolation of the work of its modern 
rebuilders, here was one element at least 
of honour and order; — and, in these, of 
delight. 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 303 

And these are the real significances of the 
flower itself. It is the utmost purification of 
the plant, and the utmost discipline. Where 
its tissue is blanched fairest, dyed purest, set 
in strictest rank, appointed to most chosen 
office, there — and created by the fact of this 
purity and function — is the flower. 

But created, observe, by the purity and 
order, more than by the function. The 
flower exists for its own sake — not for the 
fruit's sake. The production of the fruit is 
an added honour to it — is a granted conso- 
lation to us for its death. But the flower is 
the end of the seed,— not the seed of the 
flower. You are fond of cherries, perhaps; 
and think that the use of cherry blossom is 
to produce cherries. Not at all. The use 
of cherries is to produce cherry blossoms; 
just as the use of bulbs is to produce hya- 
cinths,— not of hyacinths to produce bulbs. 
Nay, that the flower can multiply by bulb, or 
root, or slip, as well as by seed, may show 
you at once how immaterial the seed-forming 
function is to the flower's existence. A 
flower is to the vegetable substance what a 
crystal is to the mineral. " Dust of sap- 
phire," writes my friend Dr. John Brown to 
me, of the wood hyacinths of Scotland in the 
spring. Yes, that is so, — each bud more 



3 o4 NATURE STUDIES. 

beautiful, itself, than perfectest jewel — this, 
indeed, jewel "of purest ray serene"; but, 
observe you, the glory is in the purity, the 
serenity, the radiance, — not in the mere con- 
tinuance of the creature. 

It is because of its beauty that its continu- 
ance is worth Heaven's while. The glory of 
it is in being, not in begetting ; and in the 
spirit and substance, — not the change. . . . 

Fasten well in your mind, then, the con- 
ception of order and purity, as the essence 
of the flower's being, no less than of the 
crystal's. A ruby is not made bright to 
scatter round it child-rubies ; nor a flower, 
but in collateral and added honour, to give 
birth to other flowers. Two main facts, 
then, you have to study in every flower ; the 
symmetry and order of it, and the perfection 
of its substance; first the manner in which 
the leaves are placed for beauty of form; 
then the spinning and weaving and blanch- 
ing of their tissue, for the reception of purest 
colour, or refining to richest surface. 

First, the order, the proportion, and 
answering to each other, of the parts; for 
the study of which it becomes necessary to 
know what its parts are; and that a flower 
consists essentially of — Well, I really don't 
know what it consists essentially of. For 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 305 

some flowers have bracts, and stalks, and 
toruses, and calices, and corollas, and discs, 
and stamens, and pistils, and ever so many- 
odds and ends of things besides, of no use at 
all, seemingly ; and others have no bracts, and 
no stalks, and no toruses, and no calices, and 
no corollas, and nothing recognizable for 
stamens or pistils, — only when they come 
to be reduced to this kind of poverty one 
doesn't call them flowers; they get together in 
knots, and one calls them catkins, or the like, 
or forgets their existence altogether. . . . 

And for farther embarrassment, a flower 
not only is without essential consistence of a 
given number of parts, but it rarely consists, 
alone, of itself. One talks of a hyacinth as 
of a flower ; but a hyacinth is any number of 
flowers. One does not talk of "a heather"; 
when one says " heath," one means the whole 
plant, not the blossom, — because heath-bells, 
though they grow together for company's 
sake, do so in a voluntary sort of way, and 
are not fixed in their places ; and yet, they 
depend on each other for effect, as much as 
a bunch of grapes. 

— Proserpina % Vol. I, Chap. IV, pp. 48-50. 

Perhaps few people have ever asked them- 
selves why they admire a rose so much more 



306 NATURE STUDIES. 

than all other flowers. If they consider, 
they will find, first that red is, in a delicately 
gradated state, the loveliest of all pure 
colors : and secondly, that in the rose there 
is no shadow, except what is composed of 

Color. —Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. IV, p. 69. 

You may at least earnestly believe, that 
the presence of the spirit which culminates 
in your own life, shows itself in dawning 
wherever the dust of the earth begins to 
assume any orderly and lovely state. . . . 
Take the nearest, most easily examined 
instance — the life of a flower. Notice what 
a different degree and kind of life there is in 
the calyx and the corolla. The calyx is 
nothing but the swaddling clothes of the 
flower ; the child-blossom is bound up in it, 
hand and foot ; guarded in it, restrained by 
it, till the time of birth. The shell is hardly 
more subordinate to the germ in the egg, 
than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at 
last; but it never lives as the corolla does. 
It may fall at the moment its task is fulfilled, 
as in the poppy ; or wither gradually, as in 
the buttercup; or persist in a ligneous 
apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the 
rose ; or harmonise itself so as to share in 
the aspect of the real flower, as in the lily ; 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 307 

but it never shares in the corolla's bright 
passion of life. 

— The Ethics of the Dust, Lecture X, p. 130. 

The first joy of the year — its snowdrops, 
the second, and cardinal one . . . the al- 
mond bloSSOm. —Prceterita, Vol. I, Chap. I, p. 44. 

A child's division of plants is into " trees 
and flowers." If, however, we were to take 
him in spring, after he had gathered his lap 
full of daisies, from the lawn into the orchard, 
and ask him how he would call those wreaths 
of richer floret, whose frail petals tossed their 
foam of promise between him and the sky, 
he would at once see the need of some inter- 
mediate name, and call them, perhaps, " tree- 
flowers." If, then, we took him to a birch- 
wood, and showed him that catkins were 
flowers, as well as cherry-blossoms, he might, 
with a little help, reach so far as to divide all 
flowers into two classes; one, those that grew 
on ground ; and another, those that grew on 
trees. The botanist might smile at such a 
division ; but an artist would not. To him, 
as the child, there is something specific and 
distinctive in those rough trunks that carry 
the higher flowers. To him it makes the 
main difference between one plant and an- 



3 o8 NATURE STUDIES. 

other, whether it is to tell as a light upon 
the ground, or as a shade upon the sky. . . . 
Plants are, indeed, broadly referable to two 
great classes. The first we may, perhaps, 
not inexpediently call Tented Plants. They 
live in encampments, on the ground, as lilies; 
or on surfaces of rock, or stems of other 
plants, as lichens and mosses. They live — 
some for a year, some for many years, some 
for myriads of years: but, perishing they 
pass on as the tented Arab passes; they 
leave no memorials of themselves, except the 
seed, or bulb, or root, which is to perpetuate 
the race. 

The other great class of plants we may 
perhaps best call Building Plants. These 
will not live on the ground, but eagerly raise 
edifices above it. Each works hard with 
solemn forethought all its life. Perishing, 
it leaves its work in the form which will be 
most useful to its successors — its own monu- 
ment, and their inheritance. These archi- 
tectural edifices we call " Trees." 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. II, p. 29. 

The flowering part of a plant shoots out 
or up, in some given direction, until, at a 
stated period, it opens or branches into per- 
fect form by a law just as fixed, and just 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 309 

as inexplicable, as that which numbers the 
joints of an animal's skeleton, and puts the 
head on its right joint. In many forms of 
flowers — fox-glove, aloe, hemlock, or blos- 
som of maize — the structure of the flower- 
ing part so far assimilates itself to that of a 
tree, that we not unnaturally think of a tree 
only as a large flower, or large remnant of 
flower, run to seed. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. VII, p. 81. 

Without entering at all into the history 
of its fruitage, the life and death of the blos- 
som itself is always an eventful romance, . . . 
The grouping given to the various states of 
form between bud and flower is always the 
most important part of the design of the 
plant; and in the modes of its death are 
some of the most touching lessons, or sym- 
bolisms, connected with its existence. The 
utter loss and far scattered ruin of the cistus 
and wild rose, — the dishonoured and dark 
contortions of the convolvulus, — and the 
pale wasting of the crimson heath of Apen- 
nine, are strangely opposed by the quiet 
closing of the brown bells of the ling, each 
making of themselves a little cross as they 
die ; and so enduring into the days of winter. 

This grouping, then, and way of treating 



3 io NATURE STUDIES. 

each other in their gathered company, is the 
first and most subtle condition of form in 
flowers : and observe — I don't mean, the 
appointed and disciplined grouping, but the 
wayward and accidental. 

— Proserpina^ Vol. I, Chap. IX, pp. 51, 52. 

Note, for a little bye piece of botany that 
in Val D'Arno lilies grow among the corn 
instead of poppies. The purple gladiolus 
glows through all its green fields in early 

Spring. — Val D'Arno, Lecture VI, p. 324. 

The families of all the beautiful flowers 
prepared for the direct service and delight of 
man are constructed on these two primary 
schemes,-— the rose representing the cinq- 
fold radiation, and the lily the sixfold ; while 
the fourfold, or cruciform, are on the whole 
restricted to more servile utility. One plant 
only, that I know of, in the Rose family, — 
the tormentilla — subdues itself to the cruci- 
form type with a grace in its simplicity which 
makes it, in mountain pastures, the fitting 
companion of the heathbell and thyme. 

— The Laws of Fesole, Chap. V, p. 49. 

With a little steady application, I suppose 
we might soon know more than we do now 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 311 

about the colors of flowers. . . . Perhaps also 
in due time we may give some account of 
that true gold (the only gold of intrinsic 
value) which gilds buttercups; and under- 
stand how the spots are laid, in painting a 

pansy.— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IV, Chap. X, p. 125. 

I have in my hand a small red poppy 
which I gathered on Whit Sunday on the 
palace of the Caesars. It is an intensely 
simple, intensely floral, flower. All silk and 
flame : a scarlet cup, perfect-edged all round, 
seen among the wild grass far away, like a 
burning coal fallen from Heaven's altars. 
You cannot have a more complete, a more 
stainless, type of flower absolute ; inside and 
outside all flower. No sparing of colour 
anywhere — no outside coarseness — no in- 
terior secrecies: open as the sunshine that 
creates it; fine-finished on both sides, down 
to the extremest point of insertion on its 
narrow stalk. . . . 

A pure cup . . . that much at least you 
cannot but remember, of poppy-form among 
the corn-field: and it is best, in beginning, 
to think of every flower as essentially a cup. 
There are flat ones, but you will find that 
most of these are really groups of flowers, 
not single blossoms ; and there are out-of-the- 



3 i2 NATURE STUDIES. 

way and quaint ones, very difficult to define 
as of any shape ; but even these have a cup to 
begin with, deep down in them. You had 
better take the idea of a cup or vase, as the 
first, simplest, and most general form of true 
flower. The botanists call it a corolla, which 
means a garland, or a kind of crown. 

— Proserpina, Vol. I, Chap. IV, pp. 52, 53. 

We usually think of the poppy as a coarse 
flower; but it is the most transparent and 
delicate of all the blossoms of the field. The 
rest — nearly all of them — depend on the 
texture of their surfaces for colour. But 
the poppy is painted glass ; it never glows so 
brightly as when the sun shines through it. 
Wherever it is seen — against the light or 
with the light — always, it is a flame, and 
warms the wind like a blown ruby. 

— Proserpina, Vol. I, Chap. IV, p. 56. 

Of the outward seemings and expressions 
of plants, there are few but are in some way 
good and therefore beautiful, as of humility, 
and modesty, and love of places and things, 
in the reaching out of their arms, and clasp- 
ing of their tendrils ; and energy of resistance, 
and patience of suffering, and beneficence 
one towards another in shade and protection. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part III, Sect. I, Chap. XII, p. 336. 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS, 313 

Flowers in a London ball-room are a 
luxury : in a botanical garden, a delight of 
the intellect; and in their native fields both. 

— A Joy Forever > Addenda, 245. 

I believe that there is often something in 
the spring which weakens one by its very 
tenderness ; the violets in the wood send one 
home sorrowful that one isn't worthy to see 
them, or else that one isn't one of them. 

The oleanders are coming out . . . and 
golden corn like Etruscan jewelry over all 
the fields. 

It is one of my pet discoveries that Homer 
means the blue iris by the word translated 
" violet." 

The Lychnis ; — it is the kind of flower 
that gives me pleasure and health and mem- 
ory and hope ! 

— Hortus Znclusus, Miscellaneous, pp. 65-68. 

Flowers seem intended for the solace 
of ordinary humanity ; children love them ; 
quiet, tender, contented ordinary people love 
them as they grow ; luxurious and disorderly 
people rejoice in them gathered. They are 
the cottager's treasure ; and in the crowded 
town, mark, as with a little broken fragment 
of rainbow, the windows of the workers in 



3H NATURE STUDIES, 

whose heart rests the covenant of peace. 
Passionate or religious minds contemplate 
them with fond, feverish intensity ; the affec- 
tion is seen severely calm in the works of 
many old religious painters, and mixed with 
more open and true country sentiment in 
those of our own pre-Raphaelites. To the 
child and the girl, the peasant and the 
manufacturing operative, to the grisette and 
the nun, the lover and monk, they are pre- 
cious always. But to the men of supreme 
power and thoughtfulness, precious only at 
times; symbolically and pathetically often to 
the poets, but rarely for their own sake. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. X, p. 129. 

I don't know any more tiresome flower in 
the borders than your especially " modest " 
snowdrop ; which one always has to stoop 
down and take all sorts of tiresome trouble 
with, and nearly break its poor little head 
off, before you can see it ; and then, half of 
it is not worth seeing. Girls should be like 
daisies ; nice and white, with an edge of red, 
if you look close, making the ground bright 
wherever they are. 

— The Ethics of the Dust, Chap. VII, p. 84. 

The Spirit in the plant,— that is to say, 
its power of gathering dead matter out of the 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 315 

wreck round it, and shaping it into its own 
chosen shape, — is of course strongest at 
the moment of its flowering, for it then not 
only gathers, but forms, with the greatest 
energy. 

And where this Life is in it at full power, 
its form becomes invested with aspects that 
are chiefly delightful to our own human 
passions; namely, first, with the loveliest 
outlines of shape; and, secondly, with the 
most brilliant phases of the primary colours, 
blue, yellow, and red or white, the unison of 
all ; and, to make it all more strange, this 
time of peculiar and perfect glory is associ- 
ated with relations of the plants or blossoms 
to each other, correspondent to the joy of 
love in human creatures, and having the 
same object in the continuance of the 
race. . . . 

The main fact, then, about a flower is that 
it is the part of the plant's form developed 
at the moment of its intensest life : and this 
inner rapture is usually marked externally for 
us by the flush of one or more of the pri- 
mary colours. What the character of the 
flower shall be, depends entirely upon the 
portion of the plant into which this rapture 
of spirit has been put. Sometimes the life 
is put into its outer sheath, and then the 



3 i6 NATURE STUDIES. 

outer sheath becomes white and pure, and 
full of strength and grace ; sometimes the 
life is put into the common leaves, just 
under the blossom, and they become scarlet 
or purple ; sometimes the life is put into the 
stalks of the flower, and they flush blue ; 
sometimes into its outer enclosure or calyx ; 
mostly into its inner cup; but, in all cases, 
the presence of the strongest life is asserted 
by characters in which the human sight 
takes pleasure, and which seem prepared 
with distinct reference to us, or rather, bear, 
in being delightful, evidence of having been 
produced by the power of the same spirit 

as OUr OWn. — The Queen of the Air, II, pp. 281, 282. 

A snowdrop was to me, as to Wordsworth, 
part of the Sermon on the Mount. 

— Prcetcrita, Vol. I, Chap. XVI, p. 183. 

"What is a weed?" — "A plant in the 
wrong place." 

It is entirely true that a weed is a plant 
that has got into a wrong place. . . . But 
some plants never do! 

Who ever saw a wood anemone or a heath 
blossom in the wrong place ? Who ever saw 
a nettle or hemlock in a right one ? And 
yet, the difference between flower and weed 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 317 

certainly does not consist merely in the 
flower being innocent, and the weed sting- 
ing and venomous. We do not call the 
nightshade a weed in our hedges, nor the 
scarlet agaric in our woods. But we do 
the corncockle in our fields. . . . 

. . . What is it, then, this temper in some 
plants — malicious as it seems — intrusive, at 
all events, or erring, which brings them out 
of their places — thrusts them where they 
thwart us and offend? Primarily, it is mere 
hardihood and coarseness of make. A plant 
that can live anywhere, will often live where 
it is not wanted. But the delicate and tender 
ones keep at home. You have no trouble in 
" keeping down " the spring gentian. It re- 
joices in its own Alpine home, and makes 
the earth as like heaven as it can, but yields 
as softly as the air, if you want it to give 
place. 

But a plant may be hardy, and coarse of 
make, and able to live anywhere, and yet be 
no weed. Nevertheless, mere coarseness of 
structure, indiscriminate hardihood, is at least 
a point of some unworthiness in a plant. 
That it should have no choice of home, no 
love of native land, is ungentle; much more 
if such discrimination as it has, be immodest, 
and incline it, seemingly, to open on much- 



318 NATURE STUDIES. 

traversed places, where it may be continually 
seen of strangers. 

The tormentilla gleams in showers along 
the mountain turf; her delicate crosslets are 
separate, though constellate, as the rubied 
daisy. But the king-cup — (blessings be upon 
it always no less) — crowds itself sometimes 
into too burnished flame of inevitable gold. 
I don't know if there was anything in the 
darkness of this last spring to make it 
brighter in resistance; but I never saw any 
space of full warm yellow, in natural colour, 
so intense as the meadows; . . . nor did I 
know perfectly what purple and gold meant, 
till I saw a field of park land embroidered a 
foot deep with king-cup and clover. 

— Proserpina^ Vol. I, Chap. VI, pp. 77, 80. 

On fine days when the grass was dry I 
used to lie down on it, and draw the blades 
as they grew, with the ground herbage of 
buttercups or hawkweed mixed among them, 
until every square foot of meadow or mossy 
bank, became an infinite picture and posses- 
sion to me, and the grace and adjustment 
to each other of growing leaves, a subject of 
more curious interest to me than the com- 
position of any painter's masterpiece. 

— Pr<zterita> Vol. II, Chap. X, p. 348. 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 319 

Every kind of knowledge may be sought 
from ignoble motives, and for ignoble ends ; 
and in those who so possess it, it is ignoble 
knowledge; while the very same knowledge 
is in another mind an attainment of the 
highest dignity, and conveying the greatest 
blessing. This is the difference between the 
mere botanist's knowledge of plants and the 
great poet's or painter's knowledge of them. 
The one notes their distinctions for the sake 
of swelling his herbarium, the other, that he 
may render them vehicles of expression and 
emotion. The one counts the stamens, and 
affixes a name, and is content; the other 
observes every character of the plant's color 
and form ; considering each of its attributes 
as an element of expression, he seizes on its 
lines of grace or energy, rigidity or repose ; 
notes the feebleness or the vigor, the seren- 
ity or tremulousness of its hues ; observes its 
local habits, its love or fear of peculiar places, 
its nourishment or destruction by particular 
influences; he associates it in his mind with 
all the features of the situation it inhabits, 
and the ministering agencies necessary to its 
support. Thenceforward the flower is to 
him a living creature, with histories written 
on its leaves, and passions breathing in its 
motion. Its occurrence in his picture is no 



3 2o NATURE STUDIES, 

mere point of color, no meaningless spark 
of light. It is a voice rising from the earth, 
— a new chord of the mind's music. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Preface, pp. 37, 38. 

Though I would fain hold, if I might, 
" the faith that every flower enjoys the air it 
breathes," neither do I ever crush or gather 
one without some pain, yet our feeling for 
them has in it more of sympathy than of 
actual love, as receiving from them in delight 
far more than we can give ; for love, I think 
chiefly grows in giving, at least its essence 
is the desire of doing good, or giving happi- 
ness, and we cannot feel the desire of that of 
which we cannot conceive, so that if we con- 
ceive not of a plant as capable of pleasure, 
we cannot desire to give it pleasure, that 
is, we cannot love it in the entire sense of the 
term. Nevertheless, the sympathy of very 
lofty and sensitive minds usually reaches so 
far as to the conception of life in the plant, 
and so to love, as with Shelley, of the sensi- 
tive plant, and Shakespeare always, as he has 
taught us in the sweet voices of Ophelia and 
Perdita, and Wordsworth always, as of the 
daffodils, and the celandine. 

"It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold, 
This neither is its courage nor its choice, 
But its necessity in being old," — 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 321 

and so all other great poets (that is to say, 
great seers ; ) nor do I believe that any mind, 
however rude, is without some slight per- 
ception or acknowledgment of joyfulness in 
breathless things, as most certainly there 
are none but feel instinctive delight in the 
appearance of such enjoyment. 

For it is a matter of easy demonstration, 
that setting the characters of typical beauty 
aside, the pleasure afforded by every organic 
form is in proportion to its appearance of 
healthy vital energy; as in a rose-bush, set- 
ting aside all considerations of gradated 
flushing of color and fair folding of line, 
which it shares with the cloud or the snow- 
wreath, we find in and through all this, cer- 
tain signs pleasant and acceptable as signs 
of life and enjoyment in the particular indi- 
vidual plant itself. Every leaf and stalk is 
seen to have a function, to be constantly 
exercising that function, and as it seems 
solely for the good and enjoyment of the 
plant It is true that reflection will show us 
that the plant is not living for itself alone, 
that its life is one of benefaction, that it gives 
as well as receives, but no sense of this 
whatsoever mingles with our perception of 
physical beauty in its forms. Those forms 
which appear to be necessary to its health, 



322 NATURE STUDIES. 

the symmetry of its leaflets, the smoothness 
of its stalks, the vivid green of" its shoots, are 
looked upon by us as signs of the plant's own 
happiness and perfection : they are useless 
to us except as they give us pleasure in our 
sympathizing with that of the plant, and if 
we see a leaf withered or shrunk or worm- 
eaten, we say it is ugly, and feel it to be 
most painful, not because it hurts us, but 
because it seems to hurt the plant, and con- 
veys to us an idea of pain and disease and 
failure of life in it 

—Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part III, Sect. I, Chap. I, pp. 326, 327. 

The leaves of the herbage at our feet take 
all kind of strange shapes, as if to invite us 
to examine them. Star-shaped, heart-shaped, 
spear-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, 
cleft, furrowed, serrated, sinuated ; in whorls, 
in tufts, in spires, in wreaths, endlessly ex- 
pressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same 
from footstalk to blossom; they seem per- 
petually to tempt our watchfulness, and take 
delight in outstripping our wonder. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. VIII, p. 130. 

Wood hyacinths — flakes of blue fire — 
The wood hyacinth is the best representative 
of the tribe of flowers which the Gauls called 

" Asphodel." — Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter VI, p. 76. 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 323 

Compare Milton's flowers in Lycidas with 
Perdita's. In Milton it happens, I think, 
generally, in the case before us most cer- 
tainly, that the imagination is mixed and 
broken with fancy, and so the strength of 
the imagery is part of iron and part of clay. 

Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, 

The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 

The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet — 

The glowing violet, 

The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine, 

With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, 

And every flower that sad embroidery wears. 

Then hear Perdita: — 

O Proserpina 
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall 
From Dis's wagon. Daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares — and take 
The winds of March with beauty. Violets, dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses 
That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady 
Most incident to maids. 

Observe how the imagination in these last 
lines goes into the very inmost soul of every 
flower, after having touched them all at first 
with that heavenly timidness, the shadow 
of Proserpine's ; and gilded them with celes- 
tial gathering, and never stops on their spots, 



324 NATURE STUDIES. 

or their bodily shape, while Milton sticks in 
the stains upon them, and puts us off with 
that unhappy freak of jet in the very flower 
that without this bit of paper-staining would 
have been the most precious to us of all. 
" There is pansies, that's for thoughts." 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part III, Sect. II, Chap. Ill, p. 418. 

Just as distinctly as the daisy and butter- 
cup are meadow flowers, the violet is a bank 
flower, and would fain grow always on a 
steep slope, towards the sun. And it is so 
poised on its stem that it shows, when grow- 
ing on a slope, the full space and opening of 
its flower, — not at all, in any strain of mod- 
esty, hiding itself, though it may easily be, 
by grass or mossy stone, " half hidden," — 
but to the full showing itself, and intending 
to be lovely and luminous, as fragrant, to the 
uttermost of its soft power. . . . 

The native color of the violet is violet; 
and the white and yellow kinds, though 
pretty in their place and way, are not to 
be thought of in generally meditating the 
flowers quality or power. A white violet 
is to black ones what a black man is to 
white ones; and the yellow varieties are, I 
believe, properly pansies, — but the true vio- 
let which I have just now called "black" 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 325 

with gerarde, "the blacke or purple violet 
have a great prerogative above others " and 
all the nobler species of the pansy itself are 
of full purple, inclining, however, in the 
ordinary wild violet to blue. 

. . . The reader must remember that he 
cannot know what violet colour really is, un- 
less he watch the flower in its early growth. 
It becomes dim in age, and dark when it is 
gathered — at least when it is tied in bunches ; 
— but I am under the impression that the 
colour actually deadens also, — at all events, 
no other single flower of the same quiet 
colour lights up the ground near it as a 
violet will. The bright hounds-tongue looks 
merely like a spot of bright paint; but a 
young violet glows like painted glass. 

— Proserpina, Vol. II, Chap. I, pp. 166-170. 

The vervain is the ancient flower sacred 
to domestic purity and cheerful service. . . . 
The dianthus means, translating that Greek 
name — " Flower of God" — and it is of all 
the wild flowers in Greece the brightest and 
richest in its divine beauty. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. Ill, Letter LXXIV, p. 379. 

Queen Violet, Sweet Violet. — I believe 
it is the earliest of its race, sometimes called 



326 NATURE STUDIES. 

" Martia," March Violet. ... It is the queen 
not only of the violet tribe, but of all low- 
growing flowers, in sweetness of scent — vari- 
ously applicable and serviceable in domestic 
economy — the scent of the lily of the valley 
seems less capable of preservation or use 

Ophelia's Pansy — The wild heart's-ease 
of Europe: its proper color an exquisitely 
clear purple in the upper petals, gradated 
into deep blue in the lower ones : the centre, 
gold. Not larger than a violet, but perfectly 
formed, and firmly set in all its petals. . . . 
Quite one of the most lovely things that 
Heaven has made. . . . 

. . . The old English names of Violets are 
many — " Love in Idleness " — making Lys- 
ander, as Titania, much wandering in mind 
and for a time mere "kits run the street" 
(or run the wood?) "Call me to you" — 
with " Herb Trinity " from its three colors 
purple, blue and gold, variously blended in 
different countries ? " Three faces under a 
hood" describes the English variety only. 
Said to be the ancestress of all the florists 
pansies. . . . 

. . . My Viola aurea is the Rock-violet of 
the Alps : one of the bravest, brightest, and 
dearest of little flowers. . . . 

. . . What the colors of flowers, or of birds, 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 327 

or of precious stones, or of the sea and air, 
and the blue mountains, and the evening and 
the morning, and the clouds of Heaven were 
given for — they only know who can see 
them and can feel, and who pray that the 
sight and the love of them may be prolonged, 
where cheeks will not fade, nor sunset die. 

And now, to close, let me give you some 
fuller account of the reasons for the naming 
of the order to which the violet belongs, 
" Cytherides." 

You see that the Uranides are, as far as I 
could so gather them, of the pure blue of the 
sky: but the Cytherides of altered blue: — 
the first, Viola, typically purple ; the second, 
Veronica, pale blue with a peculiar light; the 
third, Giulietta, deep blue, passing strangely 
into a subdued green before and after the 
full life of the flower. 

All these three flowers have great strange- 
nesses in them and weaknesses ; the Veronica 
most wonderful in its connection with the 
poisonous tribe of the foxgloves; the Giu- 
lietta, alone among flowers in the action of 
the shielding leaves ; and the Viola, grotesque 
and inexplicable in its hidden structure, but 
the most sacred of all flowers to earthly and 
daily Love, both in its scent and glow. 



328 NATURE STUDIES. 

Now, therefore, let us look completely for 
the meaning of the two leading lines, — 

Sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
Or Cytherea's breath. . . . 

I may refer my readers to the first chapter 
of the "Queen of the Air" for the explana- 
tion of the way in which all great myths 
are founded, partly on physical, partly on 
moral fact, — so that it is not possible for 
persons who neither know the aspect of 
nature nor the constitution of the human 
soul, to understand a word of them. 

Naming the Greek Gods, therefore, you 
have first to think of the physical power 
they represent. When Horace calls Vulcan, 
" Avidus," he thinks of him as the power 
of "Fire"; when he speaks of Jupiter's red 
right hand, he thinks of him as the power 
of rain with lightning; and when Homer 
speaks of Juno's dark eyes, you have to 
remember that she is the softer form of the 
rain power, and to think of the fringes of 
the rain cloud across the light of the horizon. 
Gradually the idea becomes personal and 
human in the "Dove's eyes within thy locks," 
and " Dove's eyes by the rivers of water " of 
the Song of Solomon. 

" Or Cytherea's breath," — the two thoughts 
of softest glance, and softest kiss, being thus 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 329 

together associated with the flower ; but note 
especially that the Island of Cythera was 
dedicated to Venus because it was the chief, 
if not the only Greek island, in which the 
purple fishery of Tyne was established ; and 
in our own minds should be marked not 
only as the most southern fragment of true 
Greece, but the virtual continuation of the 
chain of mountains which separate the Spar- 
tan from the Argive territories, and are the 
natural home of the brightest Spartan and 
Argive beauty which is symbolized in Helen. 
And, lastly, in accepting for the order this 
name of Cytherides, you are to remember the 
names of Viola and Giulietta, its two limit- 
ing families, as those of Shakespeare's two 
most loving maids — the two who love sim- 
ply and to the death : as distinguished from 
the greater natures in whom earthly Love 
has its due part and no more ; and farther 
still from the greatest, in whom the earthly 
love is quiescent, or subdued, beneath the 
thoughts of duty and immortality. . . . 

. . . Viola and Juliet. Love the ruling 
power in the entire character: wholly vir- 
ginal and pure, but quite earthly, and recog- 
nizing no other life than his own. Viola is, 
however far the noblest. Juliet will die un- 
less Romeo loves her: . . . Viola is ready to 



330 NATURE STUDIES. 

die for the happiness of the man who does not 
love her . . . enough — if maids know by 
Proserpina's help, what Shakespeare meant 
by the dim, and Milton by the glowing, violet. 

— Proserpina, Vol. II, Chap. I, pp. 181-194. 

If any pretty young Proserpina, escaped 
from the durance of London, . . . cares to 
come and walk on the Coniston hills in a 
summer morning, when the eyebright is out 
on the high fields, she may gather, with a 
little help from Brantwood garden, a bou- 
quet of the entire Foxglove tribe in flower, 
as it is at present defined, and may see what 
they are like, altogether. 

She shall gather : first, the Euphrasy, which 
makes the turf on the brow of the hill glitter 
as if with new-fallen manna ; then, from one 
of the blue clusters on the top of the garden 
wall, the common bright blue Speedwell; 
and, from the garden bed beneath, a dark 
blue spire of Veronica Spicata ; then, at the 
nearest opening into the wood, a little fox- 
glove in its first delight of shaking out its 
bells ; then — what next does the Doctor say ? 
— a snap-dragon? — we must go back into 
the garden for that — here is a goodly crim- 
son one, but what the little speedwell will 
think of him for a relative I can't think ! — a 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 331 

mullein? — that we must do without for the 
moment; a monkey flower? — that we will 
do without altogether; a lady's slipper? — 
say rather a goblin's with the gout ! but, such 
as the flower-cobbler has made it, here is 
one of the kind that people praise, out of 
the greenhouse, — and yet a figwort we must 
have, too; which I see on referring to Lou- 
don, may be balm-leaved, hemp-leaved, 
tansy-leaved, nettle-leaved, wing-leaved, heart- 
leaved, ear-leaved, spear-leaved, or lyre- 
leaved. I think I can find a balm-leaved 
one. . . . I'll put a bit of Teucrium Scoro- 
donia in, to finish: and now — how will my 
young Proserpina arrange her bouquet, and 
rank the family relations to their content- 
ment? 

She has only one kind of flowers in her 
hand, as botanical classification stands at 
present: and whether the system be more 
rational, or in any human sense more scien- 
tific, which puts calceolaria and speedwell 
together, — and foxglove and euphrasy: and 
runs them on one side into the mints, and 
on the other into the nightshades : — nam- 
ing them, meanwhile, some from diseases, 
some from vermin, some from blockheads, 
and the rest anyhow; — or the method I 
am pleading for, which teaches us, watchful 



332 NATURE STUDIES. 

of their seasonable return and chosen abid- 
ing places, to associate in our memory the 
flowers which truly resemble, or fondly com- 
panion, or, in time kept by the signs of 
Heaven, succeed, each other: and to name 
them in some historical connection with the 
loveliest fancies and most helpful faiths of 
the ancestral world — Proserpina be judge; 
with every maid that sets flower on brow or 
breast — from Thule to Sicily. 

— Proserpina, Vol. II, Chap. Ill, p. 206. 

I found the loveliest blue asphodel I ever 
saw in my life yesterday — a spire two feet 
high, of more than two hundred stars, the 
stalks of them all deep blue, as well as the 
flowers. Heaven send all honest people 
the gathering of the like, in Elysian fields, 

SOme day ! —Proserpina, Introduction, p. 12. 

The vast family of plants which, under rain 
make the earth green for man, and, under 
sunshine, give him bread, and, in their spring- 
ing in the early year, mixed with their native 
flowers, have given us the thought and word 
of "spring," divide themselves broadly into 
three great groups — the grasses, sedges, and 
rushes. The grasses are essentially a cloth- 
ing for healthy and pure ground, watered by 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 333 

occasional rain, but in itself dry, and fit for 
all cultivated pasture and corn. They are 
distinctively plants with round and jointed 
stems, which have long green flexible leaves, 
and heads of seed, independently emerging 
from them. The sedges are essentially the 
clothing of waste and more or less poor or 
uncultivable soils, coarse in their structure, 
frequently triangular in stem — hence called 
"acute" by Virgil — and with their heads of 
seed not extricated from their leaves. Now, 
in both the sedges and grasses, the blossom 
has a common structure, though unde- 
veloped in the sedges, but composed always 
of groups of double [husks, which have 
mostly a spinous process in the centre, 
sometimes projecting into a long awn or 
beard; this central process being charac- 
teristic also of the ordinary leaves of mosses, 
as if a moss were a kind of ear of corn 
made permanently green on the ground, and 
with a new and distinct fructification. But 
the rushes differ wholly from the sedge and 
grass in their blossom structure. It is not 
a dual cluster, but a twice threefold one, so 
far separate from the grasses, and so closely 
connected with a higher order of plants, 
that I think you will find it convenient to 
group the rushes with that higher order, 



334 NATURE STUDIES. 

to which, let me give the general name Dro- 
sidae, or dew-plants. 

These Drosidae, then, are plants delight- 
ing in interrupted moisture — moisture which 
comes either partially or at certain seasons 
into dry ground. . . . They are often re- 
quired to retain moisture or nourishment 
for the future blossom through long times 
of drought : and this they do in bulbs under 
ground, of which some become a rude and 
simple, but most wholesome food for man. 

The Drosidae are divided into five great 
orders — lilies, asphodels, amaryllids, irids, 
and rushes. No tribe of flowers have had 
so great, so varied, or so healthy an influence 
on man . . . depending, not so much on the 
whiteness of some of their blossoms, or the 
radiance of others, as on the strength and 
delicacy of the substance of their petals: 
enabling them to take forms of faultless elas- 
tic curvature, either in cups, as the crocus, 
or expanding bells, as the true lily, or heath- 
like bells, as the hyacinth, or bright and per- 
fect stars, like the star of Bethlehem, or, when 
they are affected by the strange reflex of the 
serpent nature which forms the labiate group 
of all flowers, closing into forms of exqui- 
sitely fantastic symmetry in the gladiolus. 
Put by their side their Nereid sisters, the 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 335 

water-lilies, and you have in them the origin 
of the loveliest forms of ornamental design, 
and the most powerful floral myths yet recog- 
nized among human spirits, born by the 
streams of Ganges, Nile, Arno and Avon. 
For consider a little what each of these 
five tribes have been to the spirit of man. 
First in their nobleness : the Lilies gave the 
lily of the Annunciation: the Asphodels, 
the flower of the Elysian fields : the Irids, the 
fleur-de-lys of chivalry: and the Amaryllids, 
Christ's lily of the field: while the rush, 
trodden always under foot, became the em- 
blem of humility. Then take each of the 
tribes and consider the extent of their lower 
influence. Perdita's " The crown imperial, 
lilies of all kinds," are the first tribe ; which, 
giving the type of perfect purity in the 
Madonna's lily, have, by their lovely form, 
influenced the entire decorative design of 
Italian sacred art; while ornament of war 
was continually enriched by the curves of 
the triple petals of the Florentine " giglio," 
and French fleur-de-lys ; so that it is impos- 
sible to count their influence for good in the 
middle ages, partly as a symbol of womanly 
character, and partly of the utmost bright- 
ness and refinement of chivalry in the city 
which was the flower of cities. 



336 NATURE STUDIES. 

Afterwards, the group of the turban-lilies, 
or tulips, did some mischief, (their splendid 
stains having made them the favourite caprice 
of florists;) but they may be pardoned all 
such guilt for the pleasure they have given 
in cottage gardens, and are yet to give, when 
lowly life may be again possible among us ; 
and the crimson bars of the tulips in their 
trim beds, with their likeness in crimson bars 
of morning above them, and its dew glitter- 
ing heavy, globed in their glossy cups, may 
be loved better than the gray nettles of the 
ash-heap, under gray sky, unveined by ver- 
milion or by gold. 

The next group, of the Asphodels, divides 
itself also into two principal families; one, 
in which the flowers are like stars, and clus- 
tered characteristically in balls, though open- 
ing sometimes into looser heads ; and the 
other, in which the flowers are in long bells, 
opening suddenly at the lips, and clustered 
in spires on a long stem, or drooping from 
it, when bent by their weight. The star- 
group, of the squills, garlics, and onions, has 
always caused me great wonder. I cannot 
understand why its beauty, and serviceable- 
ness, should have been associated with the 
rank scent which has been really among the 
most powerful means of degrading peasant 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 337 

life, and separating it from that of the higher 
classes. 

The belled group, of the hyacinth and con- 
vallaria, is as delicate as the other is coarse : 
the unspeakable azure light along the ground 
of the wood hyacinth in English spring; the 
grape hyacinth, which is in South France, as 
if a cluster of grapes and a hive of honey had 
been distilled and compressed together into 
one small boss of celled and beaded blue ; the 
lilies of the valley everywhere, in each sweet 
and wild recess of rocky lands ; — count the 
influence of these on childish and innocent 
life ; then measure the mythic power of the 
hyacinth and asphodel as connected with 
Greek thoughts of immortality ; finally take 
their useful and nourishing power in ancient 
and modern peasant life, and it will be strange 
if you do not feel what fixed relation exists 
between the agency of the creating spirit in 
these, and in us who live by them. It is im- 
possible to bring into any tenable compass 
for our present purpose, even hints of the 
human influence of the two remaining orders 
of Amaryllids and Irids : — only note this gen- 
erally that while these in northern countries 
share with the Primulas the fields of spring, 
it seems that in Greece, the primulaceae are 
not an extended tribe, while the crocus, nar- 



338 NATURE STUDIES. 

cissus and Amaryllis lutea, the " lily of the 
field," (I suspect also that the flower whose 
name we translate " violet " was in truth an 
Iris) represented to the Greek the first com- 
ing of the breath of life on the renewed herb- 
age. . . . Later in the year, the dianthus 
(which, though belonging to an entirely 
different race of plants, has yet a strange 
look of having been made out of the grasses 
by turning the sheath-membrane at the root 
of their leaves into a flower) seems to scatter, 
in multitudinous families its crimson stars 
far and wide. But the golden lily and crocus, 
together with the asphodel, retain always the 
old Greek's fondest thoughts — they are only 
" golden " flowers that are to burn on the 
trees, and float on the stream of paradise. 

. . . There is one great tribe of plants 
separate from the rest, and of which the 
influence seems shed upon the rest in dif- 
ferent degrees, and these would give the 
impression, not so much of having been 
developed by change, as of being stamped 
with a character of their own, more or less 
serpentine or dragon-like. . . . You may take 
for their principal types the Foxglove, Snap- 
dragon, and Calceolaria, and you will find 
they all agree in a tendency to decorate 
themselves by spots, and with bosses or 



PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 339 

swollen places in their leaves, as if they had 
been touched by poison. . . . Then the spirit 
of these Draconidae seems to pass more or 
less into other flowers, whose forms are 
properly pure vases; but it affects some of 
them slightly, — others not at all. It never 
strongly affects the heaths: never once the 
roses; but it enters like an evil spirit into 
the buttercup, and turns it into a larkspur, 
with a black, spotted, grotesque center, and 
a strange, broken blue, gorgeous and intense, 
yet impure, glittering on the surface as if it 
were strewn with broken glass, and stained 
or darkening irregularly into red. And then 
at last the serpent charm changes the ranun- 
culus into monkshood ; and makes it poison- 
ous. It enters into the forget-me-not, and 
the star of heavenly turquoise is corrupted 
into the viper's bugloss, darkened with the 
same strange red as the larkspur, and fretted 
into a fringe of thorn, it enters together with 
a strange insect-spirit, into the asphodels, 
and they change into spotted orchideae; it 
touched the poppy, it becomes a fumaria, 
the iris, and it pouts into a gladiolus ; the 
lily, and it chequers itself into a snake's-head, 
and secretes in the deep of its bell, drops not 
of venom indeed, but honey-dew, as if it were 
a healing serpent. For there is an /Escula- 



34o NATURE STUDIES. 

pian as well as evil serpentry among the 
Draconidae . . . and behold, instantly a vast 
group of herbs for healing . . . full of various 
balm, and warm strength for healing, yet all 
of them without splendid honor or perfect 
beauty, " ground ivies," richest when crushed 
under the foot; the best sweetness and gentle 
brightness of the robes of the field, — thyme, 
and marjoram, and Euphrasy. 

— The QueeH of the Air t Chap. II, pp. 292-298. 



GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 



The meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is bet- 
ter than the wood pavement cut in hexagons. 

— Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXX, p. 346. 

Was this grass of the earth made green for your 
shroud only, not for your bed ? and can you never lie 
down upon it, but only under it ? 

— Crown of Wild Olives , Preface, p. 15. 



XI. 

GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 

The Greek delighted in the grass for its 
usefulness ; the mediaeval, as also we moderns, 
for its color and beauty. . . . Consider a little 
what a depth there is in this great instinct 
of the human race. Gather a single blade of 
grass, and examine for a minute, quietly, its 
narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. 
Nothing, as it seems there, of notable good- 
ness or beauty. A very little strength, and 
a very little tallness, and a few delicate long 
lines meeting in a point, — not a perfect 
point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by 
no means a creditable or apparently much 
cared for example of Nature's workmanship; 
made, as it seems, only to be trodden on 
to-day, and to-morrow to be cast into the 
oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, 
feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull 
brown fibres of roots. And yet, think of it 
well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous 
flowers that beam in summer air, and of all 
strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes 
and good for food, — stately palm and pine, 
strong ash and oak, scented citron, burdened 
vine, — there be any by man so deeply loved, 
343 



344 NATURE STUDIES. 

by God so highly graced, as that narrow 
point of feeble green. It seems to me not 
to have been without a peculiar significance, 
that our Lord, when about to work the 
miracle which, of all that He showed, appears 
to have been felt by the multitude as the 
most impressive, — the miracle of the loaves, 
— commanded the people to sit down by 
companies " upon the green grass." He was 
about to feed them with the principal prod- 
uce of earth and the sea, the simplest repre- 
sentations of the food of mankind. He gave 
them the seed of the herb ; He bade them sit 
down upon the herb itself, which was as 
great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and 
rest, as its perfect fruit, for their sustenance ; 
thus, in this single order and act, when 
rightly understood, indicating for evermore 
how the Creator had entrusted the comfort, 
consolation, and sustenance of man, to the 
simplest and most despised of all the leafy 
families of the earth. And well does it ful- 
fil its mission. Consider what we owe merely 
to the meadow grass, to the covering of the 
dark ground by that glorious enamel, by 
the companies of those soft and countless, 
and peaceful spears. The fields ! Follow 
but forth for a little time the thought of all 
that we ought to recognize in those words. 



GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 345 

All spring and summer is in them, — the 
walks by silent, scented paths, — the rests in 
noonday heat, — the joy of herds and flocks, 
— the power of all shepherd life and medi- 
tation, — the life of sunlight upon the world, 
falling in emerald streaks, and falling in soft 
blue shadows, where else it would have 
struck upon the dark mould, or scorching 
dust, — pastures beside the pacing brooks, — 
soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, — thymy 
slopes of down overlooked by the blue line 
of lifted sea, — crisp lawns all dim with early 
dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred 
sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and softening 
in their fall the sound of loving voices; all 
these are summed in those simple words; 
and these are not all. We may not measure 
to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in 
our own land: though still, as we think of 
it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweet- 
ness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy, would open 
on us more and more, yet we have it but 
in part. Go out, in the spring-time among 
the meadows that slope from the shores of the 
Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower moun- 
tains. There, mingled with the taller gen- 
tians and the white narcissus, the grass grows 
deep and free ; and as you follow the wind- 
ing mountain paths, beneath arching boughs 



346 NATURE STUDIES. 

all veiled and dim with blossom, — paths that 
forever droop and rise over the green banks 
and mounds sweeping down in scented un- 
dulation, steep to the blue water, studded 
here and there with new mown heaps, filling 
all the air with fainter sweetness, — look up 
towards the higher hills, where the waves of 
everlasting green roll silently into their long 
inlets among the shadows of the pines ; and 
we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning 
of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, 
" He maketh grass to grow upon the moun- 
tains." There are also several lessons sym- 
bolically connected with this subject, which 
we must not allow to escape us. Observe 
the peculiar characters of the grass, which 
adapt it especially for the service of man, are 
its apparent humility, and cheerfulness. Its 
humility, in that it seems created only for 
lowest service, — appointed to be trodden on, 
and fed upon. Its cheerfulness, in that it 
seems to exult under all kinds of violence and 
suffering. You roll it, and it is stronger the 
next day ; you mow it, and it multiplies its 
shoots, as if it were grateful ; you tread upon 
it, and it only sends up richer perfume. 
Spring comes, and it rejoices with all the 
earth, — glowing with variegated flame of 
flowers, — waving in soft depth of fruitful 



GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 347 

strength. Winter comes, and though it will 
not mock its fellow plants by growing then, it 
will not pine and mourn, and turn colorless 
or leafless as they. It is always green, it is 
only the brighter and gayer for the hoar- 
frost. . . . 

As the grass of the earth, thought of as 
the herb yielding seed, leads us to the place 
where our Lord commanded the multitude 
to sit down by companies upon the green 
grass; so the grass of the waters, thought 
of as sustaining itself among the waters of 
affliction, leads us to the place where a stem 
of it was put into our Lord's hand for His 
sceptre ; and in the crown of thorns, and the 
rod of reed, was foreshown the everlasting 
truth of the Christian ages — that all glory 
was to be begun in suffering, and all power 
in humility. 

Assembling the images we have traced, and 
adding the simplest of all, from Isaiah xl, 6, 
we find, the grass and flowers are types, in 
their passing, of the passing of human life, 
and, in their excellence, of the excellence of 
human life; and this in a twofold way: first 
by their Beneficence, and then, by their en- 
durance: — the grass of the earth, in giving 
the seed of corn, and in its beauty under 
tread of foot and stroke of scythe; and the 



348 NATURE STUDIES, 

grass of the waters, in giving its freshness 
for our rest, and in its bending before the 
wave. But understood in the broad human 
and Divine sense, the " herb yielding seed " 
(as opposed to the fruit trees yielding fruit) 
includes a third family of plants and fulfils 
a third office to the human race. It includes 
the great family of the lints and flaxes, and 
fulfils thus the three offices of giving food, 
raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfil- 
ment; consider the association of the linen 
garment and the linen embroidery, with the 
priestly office, and the furniture of the taber- 
nacle ; and consider how the rush has been, 
in all time, the first natural carpet thrown 
under the human foot. Then next observe 
the three virtues definitely set forth by the 
three families of plants; not arbitrarily or 
fancifully associated with them, but in all 
the three cases marked for us by Scrip- 
tural words; 

ist. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity: in 
the grass for food and beauty — " Consider 
the lilies of the field, how they grow; they 
toil not, neither do they spin." 

2d. Humility; in the grass for rest, — "A 
bruised reed shall He not break." 

3d. Love; in the grass for clothing (be- 
cause of its swift kindling) — " The smoking 
flax shall He not quench." 



GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 349 

And then, finally, observe, the confirmation 
of these last two images in, I suppose, the 
most important prophecy, relating to the 
future state of the Christian Church, which 
occurs in the Old Testament, namely, that 
contained in the closing chapters of Ezekiel. 
The measures of the Temple of God are to 
be taken ; and because it is only by charity 
and humility, that those measures ever can 
be taken, the angel has " a line of flax in his 
hand, and a measuring reed? The use of 
the line was to measure the land, and of the 
reed to take the dimensions of the buildings ; 
so the buildings of the church, or its labors, 
are to be measured by humility, and its terri- 
tory or land, by love. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XIV, pp. 285-291. 

The plants which will not work, but only 
bloom and wander, do not (except the 
grasses) bring forth fruit of high service, but 
only the seed that prolongs their race, the 
grasses alone having great honor put on 
them for their humility. . . . 

This being so, we find another element of 
very complex effect added to the others which 
exist in tented plants, namely, that of mi- 
nute, granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels, 
mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty 



35° 



NATURE STUDIES. 



tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of 
the nearer fields, and casting a gossamered 
grayness and softness of plumy mist along 
their surfaces far away; mysterious evermore, 
not only with dew in the morning or mirage 
at noon, but with the shaking threads of fine 
arborescence, each a little belfry of grain-bells, 
all a-chime. 

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. X, p. 135. 

To trace among the grass and weeds those 
mysteries of invention and combination, by 
which Nature appeals to the intellect — to 
render the delicate fissure, and descending 
curve, the undulating shadow of the moulder- 
ing soil, with gentle and fine finger, like the 
touch of the rain itself — to find even in all 
that appears most trifling or contemptible, 
fresh evidence of the constant working of 
the Divine power " for glory and for beauty," 
and to teach it and to proclaim it to the 
unthinking and unregardless — this as it is 
the peculiar province and faculty of the 
master-mind so it is the peculiar duty which 
is demanded by the Deity. . . . 

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. IV, p. 81. 

We have found beauty in the tree yielding 
fruit, and in the herb yielding seed. How 



GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 351 

of the herb yielding no seed, the fruitless, 
flowerless lichen of the rock ? 

Lichen, and mosses (though these last in 
their luxuriance are deep and rich as herbage, 
yet both for the most part humblest of the 
green things that live,) — how of these ? 
Meek creatures ! the first mercy of the earth, 
veiling with hushed softness its dintless 
rocks; creatures full of pity, covering with 
strange and tender honor the scarred dis- 
grace of ruin, — laying quiet finger on the 
trembling stones, to teach them rest. No 
words, that I know of, will say what these 
mosses are. None are delicate enough, none 
perfect enough, none rich enough. How is 
one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred 
and beaming green, — the starred divisions 
of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the Rock 
Spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass, — 
the traceries of intricate silver, and fringes 
of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished 
through every fibre into fitful brightness and 
glossy traverses of silken change, yet all sub- 
dued and pensive, and framed for simplest, 
sweetest offices of grace. They will not be 
gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love- 
token ; but of these the wild bird will make 
its nest, and the weaned child his pillow. 

And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are 
its last gift to us. When all other service is 



352 NATURE STUDIES. 

vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and 
gray lichen take up their watch by the head- 
stone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift- 
bearing grasses, have done their parts for a 
time, but these do service forever. Trees 
for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's 
chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the 
grave. 

Yet as in one sense the humblest, in 
another they are the most honored of the 
earth-children. Unfading, as motionless, the 
worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes 
not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch 
in heat nor pine in frost. To them, slow- 
fingered, constant-hearted, is entrusted the 
weaving of the dark, eternal, tapestries of 
the hills; to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, 
the tender framing of their endless imagery. 
Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned 
rock, they share also its endurance; and 
while the winds of departing spring scatter 
the white hawthorn blossom like drifted 
snow, and summer dims on the parched 
meadow the drooping of its cowslip-gold, — 
far above, among the mountains, the silver 
lichen-spots rest, starlike, on the stone ; and 
gathering orange stain upon the edge of 
yonder western peak reflects the sunsets 
of a thousand years. 

— Modern Painters^ Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. X, pp. 138, 139. 



GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 353 

Out of the botanical books I get this gen- 
eral notion of a moss — that it has a fine 
fibrous root, a stem surrounded with spirally 
set leaves, — and produces its fruit in a small 
case, under a cap. I fasten especially, how- 
ever, on a sentence of Louis Figuier's, about 
the particular species, Hypnum: — 

" These mosses, which often form little 
islets of verdure at the feet of poplars and 
willows, are robust vegetable organisms, 
which do not decay." 

" Qui ne poursissent point." What do 
they do with themselves, then? — it imme- 
diately occurs to me to ask. And secondly, 
— If this immortality belongs to the Hypnum 
only ? 

It certainly does not, by any means ; but 
however modified or limited, this immortality 
is the first thing we ought to take note of in 
the mosses. They are, in some degree, what 
the " everlasting " is in flowers. . . . 

... It seems that the upper part of the 
moss fibre is especially z/^decaying among 
leaves ; and the lower part, especially decay- 
ing. That, in fact, a plant of moss-fibre is a 
kind of persistent state of what is, in other 
plants, annual. 

. . . The moss . . . intensifies, and makes 
perpetual, these two states, — bright leaves 



354 NATURE STUDIES. 

above that never wither, leaves beneath that 
exist only to wither. . . . 

. . . We are all thankful enough — so far 
as we ever are so — for green moss and yel- 
low moss. But we are never enough grate- 
ful for black moss. The golden would be 
nothing without it, nor even the grey. 

— Proserpina^ Vol. I, Chap. I, pp. 13-19. 

By stone-color I suppose we all understand 
a sort of tawny gray, with too much yellow 
in it to be called cold, and too little to be 
called warm. And it is quite true that over 
enormous districts of Europe, composed of 
what are technically known as "Jura" and 
" mountain " limestones, and various pale 
sandstones, such is generally the color of 
any freshly broken rock which peeps out 
along the sides of their gentler hills. It 
becomes a little grayer as it is colored by 
time, but never reaches anything like the 
noble hues of the gneiss and slate; the very 
lichens which grow upon it are poorer and 
paler; and although the deep wood mosses 
will sometimes bury it altogether in golden 
cushions, the minor mosses, whose office is 
to decorate and checker the rocks without 
concealing them, are always more meagrely 
set on these limestones than on the crystal- 
lines. 



GXASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 355 

I never have had time to examine and 
throw into classes the varieties of the mosses 
which grow on the two kinds of rock, nor 
have I been able to ascertain whether there 
are really numerous differences between the 
species, or whether they only grow more 
luxuriantly on the crystallines than on the 
coherents. But this is certain, that on the 
broken rocks of the foreground in the crys- 
talline groups the mosses seem to set them- 
selves consentfully and deliberately to the 
task of producing the most exquisite har- 
monies of color in their power. They will 
not conceal the form of the rock, but will 
gather over it in little brown bosses, like 
small cushions of velvet made of mixed 
threads of dark ruby silk and gold, rounded 
over more subdued films of white and gray, 
with lightly crisped and curled edges like 
hoar-frost on fallen leaves, and minute clus- 
ters of upright orange stalks with pointed 
caps, and fibres of deep green, and gold, and 
faint purple passing into black, all woven 
together, and following with unimaginable 
fineness of gentle growth the undulation of 
the stone they cherish, until it is charged 
with color so that it can receive no more; 
and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or 
stern, or anything that a rock is held to be 



356 NATURE STUDIES. 

at heart, it seems to be clothed with a soft, 
dark leopard skin, embroidered with ara- 
besque of purple and silver. But in the 
lower ranges this is not so. The mosses 
grow in more independent spots, not in such 
a clinging and tender way over the whole 
surface ; the lichens are far poorer and fewer, 
and the color of the stone itself is seen more 
frequently. 

— Modem Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XI, pp. 170, 171. 

God paints the clouds and shapes the 
moss-fibres, that men may be happy in see- 
ing Him at His work. . . . 

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVII, p. 381. 

Have you ever considered the infinite 
functions of protection to mountain form 
exercised by the mosses and lichens? 

— Val D'Amo, Lecture VI, p. 309. 



A CHARM OF BIRDS. 



What are these blessed feathers ? Everything 
that's best of grass and clouds and chrysoprase. 
What incomparable little creature wears such things 
or lets fall? —Hortus Inclusus, pp. 85, 86. 

Consider the art of singing, and the simplest per- 
fect master of it (up to the limits of his nature) whom 
you can find — a skylark. From him you may learn 
what it is to " sing for joy." 

— Lecture on Art % Lecture III, p. 239. 



XII. 

A CHARM OF BIRDS. 

You who care for life as well as literature, 
and for spirit, — even the poor souls of birds, 
— as well as lettering of their classes in 
books, — you, with all care, should cherish 
the old Saxon-English and Norman-French 
names of birds, and ascertain them with the 
most affectionate research, — never despising 
even the rudest or most provincial forms : all 
of them will, some day or other, give you 
clue to historical points of interest. 

— Love's Meinie, Lecture I, p. 161. 

I am going to invite you to examine, down 
to almost microscopic detail, the aspect of a 
small bird, and to invite you to do this, as a 
most expedient and sure step to your study 
of the greatest art. . . . Without further pre- 
amble, I will ask you to look more carefully 
than usual, at your well-known favourite — 
the robin — and to think about him with 
some precision. 

And first, Where does he come from ? I 
have hunted all my books through, and can't 
tell you how much he is our own, or how far 

359 



360 NATURE STUDIES. 

he is a traveller. And, indeed, are not all 
our ideas obscure about migration itself? 
You are broadly told that a bird travels, and 
how wonderful it is that it finds its way; 
but you are scarcely ever told, or led to think, 
what it really travels for — whether for food, 
for warmth, or for seclusion — and how the 
travelling is connected with its fixed home. 
Birds have not their town and country 
houses. . . . The country in which they build 
their nests is their proper home, — the coun- 
try, that is to say, in which they pass the 
spring and summer. Then they go south in 
the winter, for food and warmth ; but in what 
lines, and by what stages? The general 
definition of a migrant in this hemisphere 
is a bird that goes north to build its nest, 
and south for the winter; but, then, the 
one essential point to know about it is the 
breadth and latitude of the zone it properly 
inhabits, — that is to say, in which it builds 
its nest; next, its habit of life, and extent and 
line of southing in the winter; and finally, 
its manner of travelling. . . . 

In none of the old natural history books 
can I find any account of the robin as a 
traveller, but there is, for once, some suffi- 
cient reason for their reticence. He has a 
curious fancy in his manner of travelling. 



A CHARM OF BIRDS. 361 

Of all birds, you would think he was likely 
to do it in the cheerfulest way, and he does 
it in the saddest. . . . He always travels in 
the night, and alone ; rests, in the day, wher- 
ever day chances to find him : sings a little, 
and pretends he hasn't been anywhere. . . . 

Although there is nothing, or rather be- 
cause there is nothing, in his plumage, of 
interest like that of tropical birds, I think it 
will be desirable for you to learn first from 
the breast of the robin what a feather is. . . . 
But before we come to his feathers, I must 
ask you to look at his bill and his feet. 

I do not think it is distinctly enough felt 
by us that the beak of a bird is not only its 
mouth, but its hand, or rather its two hands. 
For, as its arms and hands are turned into 
wings, all it has to depend upon, in eco- 
nomical and practical life, is its beak. The 
beak, therefore, is at once its sword, its car- 
penter's tool-box, and its dressing-case ; partly 
also its musical instrument; all this besides 
its function of seizing and preparing the 
food, in which functions alone it has to be a 
trap, a carving-knife, and teeth, all in one. 
It is this need of the beak's being a me- 
chanical tool which chiefly regulates the 
form of a bird's face as opposed to a four- 
footed animal's. . . . 



362 NATURE STUDIES. 

Since as sword, as trowel, or as pocket- 
comb, the beak of the bird has to be pointed, 
the collection of seeds may be conveniently 
intrusted to this otherwise penetrative in- 
strument, and such food as can be obtained 
by parting crevices, splitting open fissures, 
or neatly and minutely picking things up, is 
allotted, pre-eminently, to the bird species. . . . 

You will find that the robin's beak, then, 
is a very prettily representative one of gen- 
eral bird power. As a weapon, it is very 
formidable indeed ; he can kill an adversary 
of his own kind with one blow of it in the 
throat. But I pass on to one of his more 
special perfections. 

He is very notable in the exquisite silence 
and precision of his movements, as opposed 
to birds who either creak in flying, or waddle 
in walking. ... If you think of it, you will 
find one of the robin's very chief ingratiatory 
faculties is his dainty and delicate move- 
ment, — his footing it featly here and there. 
Whatever prettiness there may be in his red 
breast, at his brightest he can always be out- 
shone by a brickbat. But if he is rationally 
proud of anything about him, I should think 
a robin must be proud of his legs. Hun- 
dreds of birds have longer and more impos- 
ing ones — but for real neatness, finish, and 



A CHARM OF BIRDS. 363 

precision of action, commend me to his fine 
little ankles, and fine little feet; this long 
stilted process, as you know, corresponding 
to our ankle-bone. Commend me, I say, to 
the robin for use of his ankles — he is, of 
all birds, the pre-eminent and characteristic 
Hopper ; none other so light, so pert, or so 
swift. We must not, however, give too 
much credit to his legs in this matter. A 
robin's hop is half a flight; he hops very 
essentially, with wings and tail, as well as 
with his feet, and the exquisitely rapid open- 
ing and quivering of the tail-feathers cer- 
tainly give half the force to his leap. . . . 

. . . And now I return to our main ques- 
tion, for the robin's breast to answer, " What 
is a feather ? " You know something about it 
already ; that it is composed of a quill, with 
its lateral filaments, terminating generally, 
more or less, in a point ; that these extremi- 
ties of the quills, lying over each other like 
the tiles of a house, allow the wind and rain 
to pass over them with the least possible 
resistance, and form a protection alike from 
the heat and the cold; which, in structure 
much resembling the scale-armour assumed 
by man for very different objects, is, in fact, 
intermediate, exactly between the fur of 
beasts and the scales of fishes; having the 



364 NATURE STUDIES. 

minute division of the one, and the armour- 
like symmetry and succession of the other. 

Not merely symmetry, observe, but ex- 
treme flatness. Feathers are smoothed 
down, as a field of corn by wind with rain ; 
only the swathes laid in beautiful order. 
They are fur, so structurally placed as to 
imply, and submit to, the perpetually swift 
forward motion. . . . The scientific people 
will tell you that a feather is composed of 
three parts — the down, the laminae, and the 
shaft. But the common-sense method of 
stating the matter is that a feather is com- 
posed of two parts, a shaft with lateral fila- 
ments. For the greater part of the shaft's 
length, these filaments are strong and nearly 
straight, forming by their attachment, a 
finely warped sail, like that of a windmill. 
But toward the root of the feather they sud- 
denly become weak, and confusedly flexible, 
and form the close down which immediately 
protects the bird's body. . . . The breadth 
of a robin's breast in brick-red is delicious. 
. . . Note, however, that the robin's charm 
is greatly helped by the pretty space of 
grey plumage which separates the red from 
the brown back, and sets it off to its best 
advantage. There is no great brilliancy in 
it, even so relieved; only the finish of it is 
exquisite. 



A CHARM OF BIRDS. 365 

If you separate a single feather, you will 
find it more like a transparent hollow shell 
than a feather, — grey at the root, where the 
down is, — tinged, and only tinged, with red 
at the part that overlaps and is visible; so 
that, when three or four more feathers have 
overlapped it again, all together, with their 
joined red, are just enough to give the colour 
determined upon, each of them contributing 

a tinge. — Love's Meinie, Lecture I, pp. 165-175. 

Consider also the Swallow, — the bird 
which lives with you in your own houses, 
and which purifies for you, from its insect 
pestilence, the air that you breathe. Thus 
the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, 
at least these four thousand years. She has 
been their companion, not of the home 
merely, but of the hearth, and the threshold ; 
companion only endeared by departure, and 
showing better her loving-kindness by her 
faithful return. Type sometimes of the 
stranger, she has softened us to hospitality ; 
type always of the suppliant, she has en- 
chanted us to mercy; and in her feeble 
presence, the cowardice, or the wrath, of 
sacrilege has changed into the fidelities of 
sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she 



366 NATURE STUDIES. 

glances through our days of gladness ; num- 
berer of our years, she would teach us to 
apply our hearts to wisdom; — and yet, so 
little have we regarded her, that this very 
day, scarcely able to gather from all I can 
find told of her enough to explain so much 
as the unfolding of her wings, I can tell you 
nothing of her life — nothing of her journey- 
ing ; I cannot learn how she builds, nor how 
she chooses the place of her wandering, nor 
how she traces the path of her return. Re- 
maining thus blind and careless to the true 
ministries of the humble creatures whom 
God has really sent to serve us, we in our 
pride, thinking ourselves surrounded by the 
pursuivants of the sky, can yet only invest 
them with majesty by giving them the calm 
of the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's 
plume ; and after all, it is well for us, if, when 
even for God's best mercies, and in His tem- 
ples marble-built, we think that, " with angels 
and arch-angels, and all the company of 
Heaven we laud and magnify His glorious 
name" — well for us, if our attempt be not 
only an insult, and His ears open rather to 
the inarticulate and unintended praise, of 
"the Swallow, twittering from her straw- 
built shed." — Love's Meinie, Lecture II, pp. 204, 205. 



A CHARM OF BIRDS, 367 

There is a bird singing outside. . . . Mak- 
ing the air sure it is summer, a dove cooing 
very low, and absolutely nothing else to be 

heard. — Fors Clavigera, Vol. II, Letter XLVI, p. 277. 

The winter has been long and hard with 
us. . . . Even the snowdrops are hardly 
venturing out of the earth. But the birds 
have come back, and to-day I hear the wood- 
peckers knocking at the doors of the old 
trees to find a shelter and home for the 
summer. 

. . . Behind the hayfield where the grass 
in spring grew fresh and deep, there used 
to be always a corncrake or two in it. Twi- 
light after twilight I have hunted that bird, 
and never once got a glimpse of it : the voice 
was always at the other side of the field, or 
in the inscrutable air or earth. 

— Pra>terita> Vol. Ill, Chap. IV, pp. 42S-457* 

You cannot so much as once look at the 
rufHings of the plumes of a pelican pluming 
itself after it has been in the water, or care- 
fully draw the contours of the wing either 
of a vulture or a common swift, or paint the 
rose and vermilion of that of a flamingo, 
without receiving almost a new conception 
of the meaning of form and color in creation. 

— Lectures on Art> Lecture IV, p. 265. 



368 NATURE STUDIES. 

No air is sweet that is silent: it is only 
sweet when full of low currents of under 
sound — triplets of birds, and murmur and 

Chirp Of insects. —Ad Valorem, Essay IV, p. 224. 

Note the quivering or vibration of the air 
. . . first, and most intense, in the voice and 
throat of the bird : which is the air incarnate. 
... Is it not strange to think of the influ- 
ence of this one power. . . . vibration ? . . . 
How much of the repose — how much of the 
wrath, folly, and misery of men, has literally 
depended on this one power of the air: — 
on the sound of the trumpet and the bell 
— on the lark's song, and the bee's murmur. 

— The Queen of the Air y I, p. 272. 

Seagulls floating high in the blue, like 
little dazzling boys' kites. —Hortusinciusus^.yj. 

The sparrows and the robins, if you give 
them leave to nest as they choose about your 
garden, will have their own opinions about 
your garden: some of them will think it well 
laid out, — others ill. You are not solicitous 
about their opinions: but you like them to 
love each other; to build their nests without 
stealing each other's sticks, and to trust you 
to take care of them. 

— Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter XII, p. 162. 



A CHARM OF BIRDS. 369 

The owl, a bird which seems to surpass all 
other creatures in acuteness of organic per- 
ception, its eye being calculated to observe 
objects which to all others are enveloped in 
darkness, its ear to hear sounds distinctly, 
and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with 
such nicety that it has been deemed pro- 
phetic from discovering the putridity of 
death even in the first stages of disease. 

— The Queen of the Air, II, p. 301. 

Whatever wise people may say of them — 
I at least myself have found the owl's cry 
prophetic of mischief to me. 

— Prceterita t No\. II, Chap. X, p. 347. 

Woodcock? Yes, I suppose, and never 
before noticed the sheath of his bill going 
over the front of the lower mandible, that 
he may dig comfortably ! But the others ! 
the glory of velvet and silk and cloud and 
light, and black and tan and gold, and golden 
sand and dark tresses, and purple shadows, 
and moors and mists, and night and star- 
light, and woods and wilds, and dells and 
deeps, and every mystery of heaven and its 
fingerwork, is in those little birds' backs and 

wingS. — Hortus Indusus, p. 57. 



370 NATURE STUDIES. 

I have seen the most wonderful of all 
Alpine birds — a gray, fluttering, stealthy 
creature, about the size of a sparrow, but of 
colder gray and more graceful, which haunts 
the sides of the fiercest torrents. There 
is something more strange in it than in the 
sea-gull — that seems a powerful creature: 
and the power of the sea, not of a kind so 
adverse, so hopelessly destructive: but this 
small creature, silent, tender and light, almost 
like a moth in its low and irregular flight — 
almost touching with its wings the crests of 
the waves that would overthrow a granite 
wall, and haunting the hollows of the black, 
cold, herbless rocks that are continually 
shaken by their spray, has perhaps the near- 
est approach to the look of a spiritual exist- 
ence I know in animal life. 

— Prattrita, Vol. II, Chap. XI, p. 356. 

Broadly . . . birds range — with relation to 
their flight — into three great classes : the 
sailing birds, who, having given themselves 
once a forward impulse, can rest, merely with 
their wings open, on the winds and clouds : 
the properly so-called flying birds, who must 
strike with their wings, no less to sustain 
themselves than to advance ; and lastly, the 
fluttering birds, who can keep their wings 



A CHARM OF BIRDS. 371 

quivering like those of a fly, and therefore 
pause at will, in one spot in the air, over a 
flower, or over their nest. And of these 
three classes, the first are necessarily large 
birds (frigate-bird — albatross, condor and 
the like) ; the second of average bird-size, 
falling chiefly between the limiting propor- 
tion of the swallow and seagull : for a smaller 
bird than the swift has not power enough 
over the air, and a larger one than the sea- 
gull has not power enough over its wings, to 
be a perfect flyer. Finally, the birds of vibra- 
tory wing are all necessarily minute, repre- 
sented chiefly by the humming birds; tut 
sufficiently even by our own smaller and 
sprightlier pets ; the robin's quiver of his 
wing in leaping, for instance, is far too swift 
to be distinctly seen. These are the three 
main divisions of the birds for whom the 
function of the wing is mainly flight. 

But to us, human creatures, there is a class 
of birds more pathetically interesting — those 
in whom the function of the wing is essen- 
tially, not flight, but the protection of their 
young. 

Of these, the two most familiar to us are 
the domestic fowl and the partridge: and 
there is nothing in arrangement of plumage 
approaching the exquisiteness of that in the 



372 NATURE STUDIES. 

vaulted roof of their expanded covering wings: 
nor does anything I know in decoration rival 
the consummate art of the minute cirrus- 
clouding of the partridge's breast 

— The Laws of Fesole> Chap. VI, p. 51. 

The perfect and simple grace of bird form, 
in general, has rendered it a favorite subject 
with early sculptors, and with these schools 
which loved form more than action. . . . 
Half the ornaments, at least, in Byzantine 
architecture, and a third of that of Lom- 
bardic, is composed of birds, either pecking 
at fruit, or flowers, or standing on either side 
of a flower or vase, or alone, as generally the 
symbolical peacock. But how much of our 
general sense of grace or power of motion, 
of serenity, peacefulness, and spirituality, we 
owe to these creatures it is impossible to con- 
ceive : their wings supplying us with almost 
the only means of representation of spiritual 
motion which we possess and with an orna- 
mental form of which the eye is never weary, 
however meaningless or endlessly repeated. 

— The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XX, p. 233. 

The Bird. — It is little more than the drift 
of the air brought into form by plumes ; the 
air is in all its quills, it breathes through its 



A CHARM OF BIRDS. 373 

whole frame and flesh, and glows with air in 
its flying, like blown flame : it rests upon the 
air, subdues it, surpasses it, outraces it : — is 
the air, conscious of itself, conquering itself, 
ruling itself. 

Also, into the throat of the bird is given 
the voice of the air. All that in the wind 
itself is weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is 
knit together in its song. As we may imagine 
the wild form of the cloud closed into the 
perfect form of the bird's wings, so the wild 
voice of the cloud into its ordered and com- 
manded voice; unwearied, rippling through 
the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting 
all intense passion through the soft spring 
nights, bursting into acclaim and rapture of 
choir at daybreak, or lisping and twittering 
among the boughs and hedges through the 
heat of the day, like little winds that only 
make the cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the 
petals of the wild rose. 

Also upon the plumes of the bird are put 
the colors of the air : on these the gold of the 
cloud that cannot be gathered by any covet- 
ousness : the rubies of the clouds — the ver- 
milion of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the 
cloud-crest, and the snow of the cloud, and 
its shadow, and the melted blue of the deep 
wells of the sky — all these, seized by the 



374 NATURE STUDIES, 

creating spirit, and woven by Athena herself 
into films and threads of plume; with wave 
on wave following, and fading along breast, 
and throat, and opened wings, infinite as the 
dividing of the foam and the shifting of the 
sea-sand; — even the white down of the cloud 
seeming to flutter up between the stronger 
plumes, seen, but too soft for touch. 

And so the Spirit of the Air is put into, 
and upon this created form ; and it becomes, 
through twenty centuries, the symbol of 
divine help, descending, as the Fire to speak, 
but as the Dove, to bless. 

— The Queen of the Air, II, p. 284. 



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